Guwahati, Sept 26 : Seven suspected militants were killed in an encounter with the Army in the Bashbari area of Dhubri district in Assam today.

New Delhi - Scores of Buddhist villagers in India's north-eastern state of Assam performed a unique funeral ritual for more than 800 endangered storks that died after a tree where they were nesting fell, a news report said Monday.

The Asian openbill storks died when the 200-year-old banyan tree that served as their colony crashed last week into a pond inside a Buddhist monastery some 300 kilometres east of state capital Guwahati, the IANS news agency reported.

The villagers, most of them farmers, considered the banyan tree sacred and believed that the storks were their guardian angels.

Guwahati, Sept 20 : Assam is set to receive a bonanza on the education front, with the center announcing plans to fund the creation of three medical colleges.

In India, it has always been felt that development has to be holistic, as only then the country will achieve a double-digit growth rate.

Keeping this in mind, Prime Minster Manmohan Singh, during his recent visit to the state, proposed a mega developmental package for Assam, which included a rupees 
160 crore medical college for Jorhat.

The hospital will be the first of its kind in Upper Assam.

Guwahati, Sept 20 : The North East has something to cheer about.

New Delhi - At least 15 people were killed and more than a dozen were sickened Saturday after inhaling toxic gas while trying to steal fuel from a freight train in eastern India's Assam state, news reports said.

The incident took place near Diphu railway station in the Karbi Anglong district, about 290 kilometres east of Assam's main city of Guwahati, the IANS news agency reported.

The freight train carrying high-speed diesel and petrol was stopped by a group of people in a isolated jungle area, railway official SS Narayanan was quoted as saying.

Jorhat (Assam), Sept 19: Members of the rebel United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) have turned good samaritans by pitching in with relief material for thousands displaced by floods.

Insurgents of ULFA''s 28th Battalion sent 14 truckloads of relief material to Majuli, the largest river island in the world, where 132 villages have been submerged.

"We have brought 14 trucks of relief materials for the people of Majuli seeing their hardship. The relief contains almost 1,000 quintals of rice, pulses, clothes and also medicines," said Jiten Dutta, a member of the rebel group.