Unidentified gunmen, masked in most of the incidents, have so far gunned down an elder brother of ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, four family-members of central publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary, and brothers of two other top extremists Munna Mishra and Krishna Kanta Gogoi.

Though initial media reports attributed the killings to a section of former ULFA militants (popularly called SULFA, ``S'' standing for ``surrendered'') as a retaliation to the gunning down of prominent SULFA Tapan Dutta in the heart of Guwahati on August 10, the ULFA chairman soon reacted to such reports and said he did not believe that the surrendered ULFA members had a hand in the incidents.

ULFA chairman ina statement said it was the ``Indian state machinery'' which was behind the killings, adding that it was a design of the ``state machinery'' to trigger off a new kind of fratricidal clash between ULFA cadres and former militants ``as was done in Punjab and Kashmir''.

Rajkhowa, whose elder brother Dimba, an employee of the Assam State Transport Corporation, was gunned down at Dibrugarh on August 11, also blamed the Army for his brother's death as well as the deaths of family members of other top ULFA activists in the State.

Reacting to this, the Army has come out with a rebuttal saying it was part of a disinformation campaign being spread by the ULFA. ``Such a disinformation campaign was preposterous as the Army is deployed in Assam at the behest of the State government to safeguard the lives and properties of the common people, whose interests were uppermost in its mind,'' the statement issued by a spokesman of Army's IV Corps, said.