Unidentified gunmen shot dead four persons of a family and injured one at Ziaguri village in Assam's violence-hit Kokrajhar district on Friday night around 11 pm.
A curfew has been imposed in the district since Thursday.
A police source informed that a group of gunmen fired indiscriminately at the house of a minority villager killing four of the family and injuring one. The slain included one woman and a ten-year-old boy. The incident has added to the tension in the communally sensitive district.
Additional forces were rushed to the area to launch a combing operation.
The killing bore the stamp of militant operation, a police source said.
The incident occurred about 10
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km from the district headquarters of Kokrajhar and despite heavy deployment of security forces. With this killing, the death toll due to a fresh spell of violence in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Council area since November 10 has gone up to 12.