Maoist rebels in eastern India have shot dead 13 police and a civilian in the worst attack by the leftist insurgents in months, officials said yesterday.
A group of around 200 rebels, including women fighters, attacked two police stations in Orissa state late on Friday and looted weapons before escaping, witnesses said. Fifteen people, most of them police, were wounded.
Orissa is one of India's poorest states and part of an eastern swathe of the country where the Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers, appear to be gaining ground.
"The attack was sudden and in the middle of the night. They killed 13 policemen and a civilian," superintendent of police Rajesh Kumar said.
The attack took place in the mineral-rich coastal state's Nayagarh district, 100km west of the state capital Bhubaneswar.
The attack took the authorities by surprise, as the Maoists had previously not been active in Nayagarh district -- although similar attacks elsewhere in Orissa have occurred twice in the past three years.
"They attacked the Nayagarh district police station and the nearby Daspalla police station," Kumar said, adding that the guerrillas had also set one of the police stations on fire, fired at a police training school and raided an armory.
The official said police were still trying to establish how many weapons were stolen.
"The Nayagarh-Daspalla sector will have more [police] force to combat the Maoist menace," director general of police Gopal Nanda said, adding the district's border had been sealed during the manhunt.
The Maoist insurgency, which grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967, has hit half of India's 29 states and is centered in a heavily forested region in central Chhattisgarh state, which bor-ders Orissa.
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