The death toll in the bombings in north-eastern India rose to at least 76 today as officials said local militants may have been helped by other terrorist groups to carry out the attacks.

Suspected separatist rebels shot and killed 42 migrant workers and wounded 19 others in at least 10 separate attacks in India’s remote northeast, officials said.

A British scientist has pleaded with Indian kidnappers, who seized her father in March and failed to release him after getting a £12,000 (€17,200) ransom, to set him free.

A bomb blew up a bus carrying paramilitary soldiers and their families, killing two soldiers and a child in the second explosion of the day in the insurgency-hit northeastern Indian Assam state, police said.