RAIPUR (India) March 15: Maoist rebels stormed a police camp in the troubled central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Thursday, killing 55 members of the police and tribal militia in one of the deadliest attacks by the insurgents in years.
Between 300 and 400 rebels attacked the camp, surrounded by dense forest in the southern part of the state, throwing grenades and petrol bombs and setting fire to it before escaping with a cache of arms and explosives.
“We have pulled out 55 bodies from the burnt police camp,” R.K. Vij, a top police officer, told Reuters over the telephone.
“The deceased include 16 Chhattisgarh Armed Forces personnel and 39 Special Police Officers (SPOs),” he added, referring to local tribal members recruited to a police militia.
The latest attack underlined the presence of Maoist rebels in much of rural India where they have formed a “red corridor” stretching from the southern tip of India all along its southern, central and eastern forests and up to the border with Nepal.
Ajai Sahni, executive director at the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management said rebels have spent much of last year amassing an enormous cache of arms.
“This period has been a period of planning and of consolidation and you will now see the consequences,” Sahni said, adding that mass support continued to grow across the “red corridor”.
“You can expect a fairly abrupt escalation of violence over coming weeks and months,” he added.
Thousands of policemen began combing the affected region to catch the Maoists but refrained from going deeper into the forests, fearing more attacks by rebels and landmines.
“We can't go blindly into the forests,” a commander co-ordinating the search operation said
In the meantime, in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, which is also affected by the rebellion, police recovered a major arms cache with over 200 home made rocket launchers, grenades, mines, pistols and explosives.
GRAVEST THREAT: Last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the insurgency was the gravest threat to India's internal security since independence from British colonial rule in 1947.More than 700 people were killed in the insurgency last year.
India's security forces and intelligence-gathering in the worst-affected states remain ineffectual in the face of the threat, Sahni said.
Maoists launched a violent movement in 1967 from a village in India's eastern state of West Bengal and say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and landless workers.
Chhattisgarh is the state that suffers most from Maoist attacks, accounting for about half of national casualties in 2006, according to the Asian Centre for Human Rights.—Reuters
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