Guwahati: 21 Bihari persons, including four females have been killed and seven others injured in separate incidents in Assam while the Army has been called out to maintain law and order in Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi told reporters today (November 19) that he had asked the Army to assist the civil administration in maintaining law and order and also as a confidence building measure among the affected people in troubled Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts.

As part of the continuing violence against Hindi-speaking people in Assam six members of a Bihari family, including four females, were slaughtered by unidentified people in upper Assam's Dibrugarh district last night (November 18), police said.

About 10-15 persons, armed with knives, stormed into the house of Uma Kant Tewari, a small businessman, at Kheronipathar under Tingkhong police station and hacked to death his wife, two minor daughters, a son, a niece, and a nephew, police said.

The assailants set the house on fire before escaping, police said, adding, Tewari managed to escape unhurt.

In neighbouring disrict of Tinsukia, two bodies of Hindi-speaking people were recovered from Tinsukia town while another was killed at Makum when miscreants set ablaze a liquor bottling plant yesterday.

In another incident last night, two armed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) ultras came on a motor-cycle to a highway dhaba at Baxirhat under lower Assam's Dhubri district and opened indiscriminate fire on truck drivers killing four Bihar truck drivers and injuring seven.

PTI