MAOIST REBELS killed at least 75 Indian government paramilitary personnel and injured 12 others in a series of devastating ambushes in central Chattisgarh province.
The attack, one of the deadliest insurgent strikes on government forces, came early yesterday. It happened amid Operation Green Hunt, an offensive aimed at crushing the Maoists.
The ambushes have fuelled concern that the government is sending poorly trained and badly equipped forces to battle guerillas who have a presence in some 250 of India’s 620 administrative districts.
India’s federal home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, blamed intelligence failure for the attacks in the thickly forested Dantewada region south of the provincial capital Raipur, which he said revealed the rebels’ “brutality and savagery”.
Police said the Maoists first triggered a landmine when a police convoy was passing through the jungle. When the police vehicles stopped, hundreds of rebels fired on them from a nearby hilltop, killing dozens of officers.
The rebels then attacked two paramilitary convoys sent to rescue colleagues under attack.
A police spokesman claimed about 80 soldiers were attacked by some 1,000 rebels.
Some of the injured personnel were eventually rescued by helicopter during a firefight between the Maoists and security personnel. No rebel dead were found.
Experts said the government offensive was unco-ordinated, rendering the paramilitary personnel easy targets for agile Maoists who were more familiar with the terrain. “It’s a flawed operation,” said K P S Gill, a retired police officer who battled several insurgencies. Security forces do not learn from past mistakes, he added.
The attack follows the killing of 10 policemen in nearby Orissa state after Maoist cadres detonated an improvised explosive device under their convoy.
The rebels, who claim to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have tapped into growing resentment among India’s rural poor and vast tribal population over exploitation by a corrupt administration.
In 20 of India’s 28 provinces, with an estimated strength of between 15,000-20,000, the Maoists operate a parallel government in their areas of dominance and have been described as the country’s “greatest internal security challenge” by prime minister Manmohan Singh.
The Maoists have warned the government that attacks such as yesterday’s would intensify unless it halted its offensive against them. In the prevailing stand-off, Mr Chidambaram has threatened to intensify operations if the rebels do not open negotiations by renouncing violence.
More than 2,000 people, including police, militants and civilians, have been killed in Maoist violence in the past few years.
The Maoists’ eventual aim is to establish a “people’s government” in their areas of control by progressively dominating the countryside through coercion and indoctrination.
The Indian government’s response has often been use of force and abuse of anti-terrorism legislation.