GUWAHATI, India: Nine people were killed overnight in clashes between ethnic groups in India's northeast, officials said Wednesday, as the death toll reached 35 with 170,000 villagers displaced by the unrest.

"The situation is tense and we are getting additional paramilitary troopers," Assam police chief J.N. Choudhury told reporters, adding that the bodies of nine people killed overnight had been found on Wednesday morning.

Hagrama Mohilary, chief of the Bodoland Territorial Council, a local government body, told AFP by telephone that "35 people have been killed and an estimated 170,000 are sheltered in government-run relief camps".