Maoist rebels in India briefly took more than 300 passengers hostage on a train yesterday, police said, as the insurgents stepped up attacks during the country’s general elections.
At least 200 armed rebels swooped on the train at a station in the insurgency-hit eastern state of Jharkhand and held the passengers for about four hours.
The Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers, have launched a series of assaults in an apparent attempt to disrupt India’s polls.
They had called a general strike in the area and have previously used violence to enforce their call for all businesses to stay closed and for people to remain in their homes during the strike.
The train was held in Latehar district, which went to the polls last week in the first phase of the elections, with further voting in the state to be held today.
“The train has been released by the Maoists. All the passengers are safe,” senior police officer Sarvendu Thatagat said.
Latehar was hit by the Maoists during voting last Thursday, when a landmine exploded under a bus carrying paramilitary forces to a polling booth in the district, located 140km from the state capital Ranchi.
Seven soldiers and two civilians were killed in that attack.
India’s Maoist insurgency, which grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967, has been active in more than half of the country’s 29 states.
The rebels, who have been described by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a serious threat to national security, use the forests of Chhattisgarh State — which borders Jharkhand — as their base.
Railway spokesman A.K. Chandra told the NDTV news channel that there had been no contact with the train as the rebels had cut communication links.
Indian television reported that as many as 700 people had been on board.
Helicopters flew overhead as security forces rushed to the scene, but the Maoists retreated before any rescue operation was launched, police said.
Polling in areas affected by the Maoist insurgency has been staggered over several phases to ensure adequate deployment of security personnel.
Across eastern India, the killed at least 16 people during the first phase of voting.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.