NEW DELHI – At least 23 Indian security forces were killed in an ambush by Maoist militants in central Chattisgarh state, officials said on Sunday, reviving concerns about a decades-old insurgency that appeared to have been largely contained in recent years.
A large Indian security force was conducting a clean-up operation in a densely wooded area on the outskirts of Bijapur district when they were ambushed by insurgents on Saturday in a four-hour shootout.
Avinash Mishra, the deputy superintendent of police in Bijapur, said 31 additional security guards were injured in the attack.
He said the militants, often called Naxalites, also suffered heavy casualties, adding that the body of an insurgent remained in place while the rest were removed by tractors. Mishra said the insurgents managed to seize the weapons of the dead soldiers.
Amit Shah, the Indian minister of internal affairs, the official responsible for internal security affairs, confirmed the deaths and interrupted the electoral campaign in northeastern India to fly back to New Delhi and lead the response, including a search for the attackers.
“The blood of our soldiers, in defense of the nation, will not be wasted,” said Shah. “Our fight against the Naxalites will continue with more determination and vigor.”
Insurgents, whose roots go back to communist politics in the 1960s, use violence against the state in the name of defending the cause of India’s poor and marginalized. Their reach has been so widespread and their attacks so frequent that, in 2006, the Prime Minister of India declared them “the country’s biggest internal security challenge”.
However, the Indian government has reduced the space where insurgents have operated in the past decade, combining military operations involving tens of thousands of paramilitary forces with economic packages for the areas that insurgents used as a base for activities and recruitment. Where insurgents have operated in about 200 districts at their peak, they are confined to less than 50 districts last year, according to official data.
The government has been hunting down insurgent leaders, killing large numbers or forcing them to surrender, and insurgent attacks have decreased in frequency and power.
However, the group continues to launch attack and escape attacks, ambushing security forces on friendly terrain and inflicting casualties in deadly battles. Before Saturday’s attack, 56 people, including security forces, insurgents and civilians, were killed in Maoist violence this year, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism portal.