Sixteen Hindi-speaking villagers have been killed by separatist Bodo tribes people in India's north-eastern state of Assam.

An Assam police spokesman told the BBC that late on Monday a group of heavily-armed Bodo militants entered the village of Paharpur in the state's central district of Darrang and started firing indiscriminately using automatic weapons.

Nine women, five men and two children were killed in the firing.

Many more were injured, though it was not yet clear how many.

All those slaughtered were Hindi-speaking settlers from the state of Bihar.

Republic Day violence

The outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), which is fighting for an independent homeland for the Bodo tribe in Assam, has been blamed for the massacre.

Last week, the NDFB militants killed 15 Bengali-speaking villagers in western Assam.

Police said the NDFB had called for a boycott of Indian Republic Day celebrations later this month along with 13 other separatist groups in northeast India.

They said the massacres were the usual violent prelude to Republic Day, during which rebels in the troubled Indian region bordering Burma, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh attack security forces, vital installations and target Hindi and Bengali-speaking villagers.