World briefs

Attacks' 2-day death toll hits 57 in India

GAUHATI, India - Militants bombed utilities, a tea plantation and a crowded marketplace in northeastern India on Sunday, intensifying violence that has killed 57 people in two days and snarling efforts to bring cease-fires in a region where dozens of ethnic rebel groups are fighting for separate homelands.

At least 17 bombings and shootings were carried out over the weekend in Nagaland and Assam states. The attacks - particularly an explosion Saturday that ripped through a railway station full of commuters - angered even some separatist leaders.

Nearly 40 groups have been fighting in the mountainous region of multiple ethnicities wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar. Rebels in Nagaland have been leading one of Asia's longest running separatist conflicts, dating to shortly before India gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Nagaland's death toll stood at 28 on Sunday, while Assam's rose to 29. No arrests had been made in the two states, police said. No immediate claim of responsibility was made.

A bomb exploded late Sunday near a market in Bijni, 125 miles west of Assam state's capital of Gauhati, leaving three dead. Shortly afterward, another explosion killed another man and left 25 injured in nearby Gauripur along India's border with Bangladesh.

Guerrillas set off a bomb at a tea plantation in nearby Borhat, killing a worker and wounding two others.

Also in Borhat, suspected rebels targeted government-run Oil India Ltd.'s natural gas pipeline with a land mine blast. The extent of damage was not immediately known.

WASHINGTON - The world's economic powers, which ended three days of meetings Sunday, insisted they are moving closer to a deal on debt relief for Iraq and other poor nations even though an agreement has proved elusive.

Despite failing to settle differences on that issue, financial officials attending the weekend meetings of the IMF and World Bank, as well as Friday's gathering of the Group of Seven countries, did join in urging oil producers to boost supplies and help moderate prices, which have climbed over $50 a barrel.

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