GUWAHATI: India’s northeastern Assam state deployed paramilitary troops yesterday to quell clashes between Muslim migrants and tribal groups that have left almost 50 people dead.

Some 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the violence that broke out Friday and swiftly spread through three districts of the state.

The death toll rose to 49 yesterday after eight people injured in fighting over the weekend died in hospital and nine more bodies were recovered from the violence-hit areas, state Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters.

A senior Assam police official said an additional 2,100 paramilitary personnel had been sent to the affected areas, where curfews with shoot-on-sight orders have already been imposed.

The clashes, between members of the Bodo tribal group and Muslim settlers originally from Bangladesh, have seen raids on villages by groups armed with bows and poison-tipped arrows, spears and machetes.

“They set fire to a large number of homes in my village,” said Dipali Basumatary, who had taken shelter with her two children in a government-run relief camp. At least 15 of the fatalities so far have been people killed in police firing, the chief minister has said, adding that calm was being restored.

Although there have been tensions between indigenous and immigrant communities in Assam, violence on such a scale is extremely rare, and some state officials accused local separatist groups of fuelling the unrest.

Minister Sarma said the root cause was a program of “ethnic cleansing” implemented by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), a rebel group fighting for an independent tribal homeland.

“They want to drive out all non-Bodos from the area,” Sarma told AFP.

The NDFB, which is a largely Christian outfit, entered into a cease-fire with the Indian government in 2005, but has never renounced its independence struggle.

“We are investigating reports that NDFB militants have jumped into the fighting,” Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said late Sunday.

In an e-mail sent to journalists Sunday night, the group’s spokesman, S. Sanjarang, denied any role in the fighting.

Animosity between the Bodos and Muslim migrants stems from long-standing land disputes.

The groups clashed sporadically throughout the 1990s, leaving at least 250 dead and an estimated 300,000 displaced.