More than 30,000 people have fled their homes in northeast India to escape fighting between indigenous tribes and Muslim settlers.

Officials in Assam state said Monday at least 18 people have been killed in recent days in clashes over land rights.

The New Delhi government has sent in troops to quell the fighting and opened shelters for those displaced.

Animosity and accusations of land-stealing have long simmered in the region between members of the ethnic Bodo community and the thousands of mostly Bengali Muslim settlers, many of whom came from the former East Pakistan before it became Bangladesh in 1971.