Bomb wounds 25 in India

A powerful bomb exploded in a crowded market in India's troubled northeast on Tuesday, wounding at least 25 people, police said. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion in a wholesale vegetable market in Imphal, the capital of Manipur state, said Kashim Ali, a police officer.

The injured, some of them in serious condition, were rushed to hospital, Ali said.

The army, police and paramilitary soldiers immediately launched a search operation, leading to a shootout in which one suspected militant was killed, he said.

Other details were not immediately available.

More than a dozen insurgent groups have been fighting government forces in Manipur, a state of two million people, since the 1980s, demanding an independent homeland or wide autonomy, according to the AP.

Tuesday's attack came less than a week after government forces arrested a key fighter of the rebel group, People's Revolutionary Party of Kanglei Pak.

T.E.