Violence in the restive Indian state of Assam has killed 68 people including 12 children, authorities said Wednesday, as separatist rebels dramatically intensified a long-running campaign in the tea-growing area.

Heavily armed militants launched a series of coordinated attacks in rural Assam on Tuesday, pulling villagers from their homes and shooting them at point-blank range, witnesses said.

Tribal separatists killed at least 34 people, including four women, in a series of attacks in India's remote northeastern state of Assam on Tuesday, police said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party made significant gains in the restive Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday, extending its grip on the country after a landslide general election victory in May.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) more than doubled its seats in the 87-member state parliament and was for the first time in with a real chance of being part of the next coalition government.

India's birth rate declined dramatically in the last two decades due in part to rising female literacy, a new study shows, but experts warned against complacency in the country of 1.2 billion.

The Total Fertility Rate -- the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime based on current trends -- fell to just 2.3 last year from 3.6 in 1991, according to official figures released on Monday.

Three people were killed and four others wounded in a bomb attack early Sunday in India's restive northeast, police said, the second strike in the area in less than a week.

The blast shook west Imphal, state capital of Manipur, which borders Myanmar -- an area that has been plagued by separatist violence for decades.

An Indian diplomat at the center of a bitter row with the United States has been stripped of her duties over unauthorized statements to media, a government source and reports said Saturday.

Devyani Khobragade was arrested and strip-searched in New York last December while serving as India's deputy consul-general on charges of mistreating her servant.

Sri Lanka's main opposition Friday promised to address international concerns over war crimes and normalize relations with regional superpower India and Western nations if they won January presidential polls.

Candidate Maithripala Sirisena said he would also negotiate with the European Union to win back tariff concessions that were withdrawn four years ago after Colombo refused to bring about democratic reforms.

A Pakistani government prosecutor said Friday he will challenge a court order granting bail to the alleged mastermind of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, which sparked strong condemnation from India.

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi is accused of planning the 60-hour siege on India's commercial capital that left 166 people dead and was blamed on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

A Pakistani court Thursday granted bail to the alleged mastermind of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, lawyers told AFP, prompting India to demand an appeal.

The 60-hour siege on India's economic capital left 166 people dead and was blamed on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly condemned a "cowardly" attack by Taliban militants Tuesday on an army-run school in neighboring Pakistan that killed at least 130 people -- most of them children.

Modi branded the attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar "a senseless act of unspeakable brutality" and said India shares rival Pakistan's pain.