Hundreds of police officers scoured remote eastern Indian jungles today for suspected communist rebels who attacked a police post with guns, grenades and gasoline bombs, killing 55 officers.
The attack yesterday was one of the bloodiest attacks in the decades-long insurgency by the Maoist rebels, who hold sway over a wide swath of impoverished forest communities and farming villages largely left out of India's economic boom.
Nearly 400 police officers have been rushed to the area to track down the suspected rebels, said police officer Mira Umitra.
"Fifty-five police officers have been killed and another 12 wounded in the attack," Umitra said.
At least six suspected rebels were killed in retaliatory fire by police.
There is little fear the insurgency could destabilise India. But the rebels are a major disruptive force in a "red corridor" from India's central hinterlands to its east coast, and their attacks are growing more sophisticated and deadly.
Central India's forests have been a haven for the rebels since the insurgency erupted in 1967 in the eastern village of Naxalbari.
The rebels came to be called Naxalites, and their rallying cry of land and jobs resonated among the poor — especially central and eastern India's indigenous peoples, who have long lived on some of the country's richest mineral deposits and amid its largest timber reserves, but have rarely benefited from them.
After festering with small attacks for decades, the insurgency has now spread across 13 of India's 28 states and the rebels are believed to have about 6,000 fighters in an increasingly well-armed force.
The conflict has become steadily more brutal over the past two years. The deadliest Naxalite attack came on February 28th, 2006, when the rebels killed at least 50 people returning from a rally held by the anti-Maoist militia in Chhattisgarh.