Guwahati • The Assam government yesterday launched a massive anti-insurgency offensive after separatists killed 36 people in the past week, most of them Hindi-speaking people, while the panic stricken migrant workers have started fleeing the state fearing more terror attacks.

"The operation involving the army, police, and the paramilitary, has already begun and is aimed at flushing out militants holed up in bases in the eastern Karbi Anglong district," a senior police official said.

The decision to crackdown on separatist guerrillas was taken at a meeting of the Unified Command, involving top army and paramilitary commanders, besides the state police, held yesterday in Guwahati.

Top union home ministry officials, who arrived here to assess the security situation following stepped up rebel attacks, also attended the meeting.

Authorities have opened two relief camps to shelter migrant workers and have shifted more than 100 other families to safer areas.

"There are an estimated 200 Hindi-speaking people in two relief camps currently staying under police protection. We have also persuaded about 100 families to leave their homes and take shelter in safer areas," Karbi Anglong district police chief Anurag Thanka said. "These steps were being taken as a precautionary measure."

There were four coordinated attacks beginning Wednesday in eastern Assam's Karbi Anglong district in which 28 Hindi-speakers were killed - six of them gunned down in two separate attacks on Sunday.

Most of the victims were from Bihar and Rajasthan who had made Assam their home for decades and were doing business or odd jobs as brick kiln workers, fishermen, and daily wage earners.

Eight more civilians, most of them Assamese, were also killed in a series of explosions across the state linked to Independence Day celebrations.

The police blamed the attacks on the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) and the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF), both working in tandem in parts of Karbi Anglong district.