GAUHATI, India — Suspected separatists fatally shot eight people yesterday in India’s northeast as army, police and paramilitary forces swept through a remote corner of the region after earlier militant attacks killed dozens, officials said.The killings in the two separate attacks in Assam state brought the death toll from three days of violence to 64 people, mostly migrant labourers from other parts of India.

The violence is the worst in the region in years and is widely seen as an attempt by insurgents to boost waning support among the impoverished area’s indigenous people and to force the government to resume peace talks. The rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland, have stepped up their attacks since Indian authorities called off peace talks in September and resumed military offensives.

Government officials have insisted violence would not force them back to negotiations, and yesterday army, police and paramilitary forces began to seek out rebel camps across the thickly forested state.

Sunday evening’s attacks followed the killing of 48 migrant workers on Friday and Saturday, said state Police Chief R.N. Mathur. A land mine blast killed eight government officials Saturday.

The United Liberation Front of Asom is blamed for the violence, but the group has not claimed responsibility for any of the attacks. It does not usually comment on such incidents.

The attacks came hours after India’s junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, had visited the area, and had told a crowd of at least 300 workers: “I assure you that this won’t happen again.”

At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have died in fighting between government forces and separatists since 1979. Migrants, nearly all of whom speak Hindi, northern India’s dominant tongue, are frequently attacked by ULFA in an effort to draw national attention to their demands for independence for ethnic Assamese, who make up a majority of Assam’s 26 million people, who speak their own language.

Alongside Assam’s separatists, dozens of other insurgencies are festering in the northeast’s six other states. The militants say politicians in New Delhi — 1,000 miles to the west — exploit the region’s rich natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people, most of them ethnically closer to natives of nearby Myanmar or China than to the majority of Indians.