Police say 12 people have been killed in fighting between rival rebel factions in India’s remote northeast.

L. Lotha, a police official, said authorities have recovered 12 bodies from a village in Nagaland state, which lies on India’s eastern border with Myanmar.

He says all 12 dead were believed to have taken part in a gunbattle between rival factions of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland, which has been fighting for a half-century to create a separate country for the Naga people.

About 2 million Nagas live in northeastern India, a region of myriad ethnic groups that has long been plagued by dozens of insurgencies.