New Delhi - At least five people were killed and 51 wounded when suspected separatist rebels carried out three blasts in Guwahati, the main city of India's north-east Assam state Thursday, officials said.

"There were three low-intensity bombings across Guwahati in which five people died. Fifty one people were wounded out of which 15 are in a serious condition," Deba Bora, spokesman of the Assam government told reporters.

Assam police chief GM Srivastava said there were clear leads that state's separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was behind the attacks.

According to local police, the first blast took place in Birubari, a residential area at 2.30 pm local time (9 am GMT), injuring two people.

The explosion was followed by another blast in a vegetable market in the Bhutnath area at 5.15 pm, wounding more than 20 people of which three people died.

There was a third blast at the upmarket Bhangagarh area outside some shopping malls half an hour later which claimed two lives and injured another 28 people, police said.

"There was a big blast and we saw a big fire when we went outside," Mukesh (who uses only one name) a mall manager told the NDTV network. "Hawkers and vegetable vendors ran helter-skelter, shouting and screaming."

The explosives were planted inside a garbage dump and atop a bicycle, preliminary investigations by the police showed.

Doctors at state-run hospitals where the wounded were taken said that the death-toll could rise. While 20 people who suffered minor injuries were discharged after first-aid,
31 were being treated at the hospitals.

The blasts occurred ahead of a visit of Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram who was slated to review the security situation in the state, local media reported.

The Assam police said there were specific intelligence inputs that the ULFA would target marketplaces and areas in Guwahati.

"We have clear and definite leads that the ULFA is behind this. We are carrying investigations to find out the names of the ULFA commanders involved in the attacks," Srivastava said.

The bombings come two months after the state witnessed the worst terrorist bombings in its history - over 90 people were killed and over 300 injured in the attacks on October 30.

Indian security agencies said they suspected the ULFA of having carried out the bombings with help from Bangladesh-based Islamic militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami
(HuJI).

The ULFA, Assam's biggest separatist outfit has been fighting for an independent homeland since 1979.

India's north-east, which shares borders with China, Myanmar and Bangladesh, is a volatile region where nearly 40 separatist, tribal or leftist groups are active in five states.

More than 15,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in the region in the past decade. (dpa)