GUWAHATI, India - Suspected rebels opened fire with automatic weapons on villagers after waking them up from their sleep in northeastern India early Monday, killing six. The death toll has now risen to 63 from three days of violence in a region where many ethnic rebel groups are fighting for separate homelands.

Seven people also got injured by the group of heavily armed militants, who descended on Gelapukhuri, a village 130 miles north of Guwahati, the capital of Assam state, said police officer P. Baruah, who was contacted by telephone.

Baruah blamed the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) for the attack, the latest in a series which claimed 57 lives on October3 &4, when suspected rebels bombed a tea plantation and a crowded marketplace.

Meanwhile, shops and schools were closed and most traffic halted in parts of Assam state on Monday during a dawn-to-dusk strike called by a students' group to protest the killings, said A. K. Bhutani, the district magistrate of Kokrajhar, which was hit by several bomb and gunfire attacks over the weekend.