Maoist Rebels Kill 15 Policemen in India

Maoist in India

NEW DELHI – Maoist rebels killed 15 policemen and injured three others in attacks during the past two days in India's eastern state of Chhattisgarh, state police officials said Friday.

An overnight landmine explosion triggered by left-wing guerrillas in a forested area in the state's Dantewada district, almost 400 kilometers south of the state's capital of Raipur, killed 10 officers and injured three others, according to Ram Niwas, state police official in-charge of Maoist operations.
The attack came just hours after heavily-armed guerillas, known here as Maoists, killed five security personnel in a pre-dawn ambush Thursday in the neighboring district of Narayanpur, also in Chhattisgarh state.


Ankit Garg, superintendent of police, said Thursday night's attack took place when a vehicle carrying policemen ran over a landmine while returning to base after a search operation.
"The massive blast tore apart the vehicle that was in fact built to withstand landmines," he said.
The rebels who triggered the land mine were mainly women who were hiding nearby, Mr. Garg said. After setting off the explosion, they began firing indiscriminately and robbed the offices' weapons, he said.
Chhattisgarh, one of India's most densely forested, mineral-rich states, is a center of guerrilla warfare being waged by rebels known as Maoists or Naxalites, named after Naxalbari, the town in West Bengal where the movement began in the late 1960s.
The Maoists, inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have fought the government for more than four decades, claiming to be fighting for the rights of the tribal people and rural poor who live in these remote regions with low literacy and high poverty rates.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described this guerrilla war, mainly waged from central and eastern India, as the country's main internal security challenge and advised state governments to increase social service programs in these areas to lure the poor away from supporting the rebels.
But despite myriad efforts to boost development, Maoist attacks appear to be on the rise again. Also in Chhattisgarh state last month, at least nine police officers were killed and dismembered by Maoist insurgents in a densely-forested area near the border with eastern Orissa state.
Last year, in one of the deadliest attacks to date, Maoist rebels killed 74 policemen in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi-based research group, says at least 321 people, including civilians, policemen and Maoist rebels, have been killed so far this year, compared with 1,180 deaths last year and 997 killings in 2009.
Ajai Sahni, executive director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, dubbed Thursday's attacks as "killings of opportunity."
"Their (Maoists) intention is to inflict as many fatalities on state police officials whenever opportunity arises," he said.