Maoist Rebels Kill at Least 7 Police Officers in India
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Version 0 of 1. NEW DELHI — Maoist rebels in a heavily forested area in eastern India killed at least seven police officers and wounded 10 others on Saturday, the police said. “We are still retrieving the dead bodies,” said Mukesh Gupta, a police official in Chhattisgarh State. The gunmen ambushed a special unit of 68 police officers as the officers were conducting an operation in the Pedmal forest in the Sukma district of Chhattisgarh State, Mr. Gupta said. Roads and cellphone service are poor in the remote district, where the rebels have staged numerous attacks in the past. The rebels were armed with assault rifles and other heavy weapons. It was not clear whether they confiscated the weapons of the officers they killed. The rebels, who were originally inspired by the Chinese Communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong and have been active in several Indian states for decades, say they want land for landless farmers and jobs for the poor. In April 2010, rebels in the same area killed 76 police officers in a similar ambush. In 2013, they killed 25 people, including some top members of the Congress Party whose convoy was attacked. |