NEW DELHI, India — Eleven bomb blasts ripped through India’s northeastern state of Assam on Thursday, killing about 50 people and leaving more than 300 injured. The serial blasts took place before noon, within a span of 50 minutes.
State officials described the explosions as the worst ever in the violent and troubled history of Assam, where separatist insurgency groups have been active since the early 1980s and recent bomb attacks have been blamed on Islamist militants from neighboring Bangladesh.
The first of the spate of bombs went off in a crowded vegetable and fruit market called Ganeshguri, in Guwahati. The blast caused a major fire in the area and gave rise to a thick plume of smoke that engulfed the market and places nearby.
The second explosion was in the car park of a government office and another at a bazaar near a police station.
No group claimed responsibility, but officials indicated that it could be the work of a local militant group called the United Front of Asom, or ULFA, which has been fighting the Indian state for an independent homeland. But officials also said they could not rule out the involvement of other groups.
“It is very early to make a conclusion, but ULFA has a history of triggering serial blasts,” Assam’s health minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, told reporters.
Police officials said the number of the dead might rise. A perceived delay in the time it took for emergency help to arrive led to street violence as angry, slogan-shouting crowds set government vehicles on fire.
An injured eyewitness told an English news channel, Times Now, about the scene.
“I had gone to the market when I heard the blasts. We were shocked. People were running everywhere. Vehicles were damaged and on fire,” he said. “The smoke blinded us. The sound of the blast was deafening.”
Police imposed a curfew after the angry crowds took to the streets.
Since May, several Indian cities have been targeted by bombings in public places, killing more than 160 people. Officials have arrested suspects in some of the blasts from a new group that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen. Last week, some Hindu radicals were also arrested for their alleged involvement in one of the blasts.
Several separatist groups are active in Assam and India’s other northeastern Himalayan states, bordering Bangladesh, China, Burma and Bhutan. Dozens of these groups, broadly organized along ethnic lines, have been fighting New Delhi and one another for greater control of the region.
The serial bombings Thursday were the third such incident in Assam this year. Powerful explosions in March and June had rocked the state. More than 10,000 people have died from such violence in the northeastern region in the past decade.
