Separatist militants opened fire with automatic weapons on Muslim villagers in remote north-east India, killing at least 10 people and wounding four in two attacks, police have said.

Rebels from a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland were behind the attacks late on Thursday, said LR Bishnoi, the inspector general of police in the Kokrajhar district of Assam state.

All of the dead were Muslims, he said.

The first attack took place in a village in Baksa district in western Assam, when at least eight rebels opened fire on a group of villagers sitting in a courtyard. Three people were killed and two wounded, Bishnoi said.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by local television channels, the second attack took place in Kokrajhar when more than 20 armed men broke open the doors of two homes and sprayed them with bullets, killing seven people.

The National Democratic Front of Bodoland has been fighting for a separate homeland for the region's ethnic Bodo people. The Bodos are an indigenous tribe in Assam, making up 10% of the state's 33 million people.

The same area where Thursday's attacks took place There were fierce clashes between Bodo tribals and Muslims in 2012 in the same area where Thursday's attacks took place.

Dozens of rebel groups have been fighting the government and sometimes each other for years in the seven states in north-east India. They demand greater regional autonomy or independent homelands for the indigenous groups they represent.

At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in such violence in Assam state alone.

The rebels accuse the federal government of exploiting the region's rich mineral resources but neglecting the local people.