Nagpur, Dec. 1: At least 13 CRPF troopers were killed and an equal number injured in a Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh this afternoon, with the wounded facing a winter night in the dense jungles before possible evacuation tomorrow morning.
Police said the ambush in Sukma district of the restive Bastar region came in a “liberated zone” where the forces had intensified operations because it served as a corridor connecting rebel hubs in five states.
The attack broke a lull in rebel activity and came amid a steady stream of surrenders. Tomorrow, the Maoists begin their “People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army Week”, during which they launch major offensives against the forces across their strongholds.
State police sources feared the death toll would rise since the injured troopers were still trapped without treatment in a hilly and forested terrain, at a spot whose exact coordinates were still unclear.
Air force sources acknowledged receiving a CRPF request for evacuation but said it came at 5.30pm, after sunset.
They said that neither the CRPF nor the state police could guarantee that they would be able to immediately “illuminate and sanitise” the landing ground if air force choppers were deployed for evacuation at night.
The ambush site is close to the place where an Mi-17 air force helicopter came under Maoist fire on November 21 during an operation to evacuate six CRPF commandos injured in an encounter.
Details of today’s attack remained sketchy. It was unclear how many jawans were part of the patrol, how many Maoists attacked them, and whether bombs were used or bullets or both.
Based on preliminary reports, the state police’s anti-Maoist operations chief, R.K. Vij, said in Raipur that the attack occurred around 3pm near the village of Kasalpara, 7-8km south of the CRPF base camp at Chintagufa.
The CRPF jawans, some from the elite Cobra force, were from the nearby Chintagufa and Chintalnaar camps. Unconfirmed reports said they were travelling in two teams of about 200 each.
They had been out since Saturday morning on an area domination exercise, part of special operations being carried out by the central paramilitary forces in the area since November 16.
The area is crucial to the Maoists since it connects Bastar to their hubs in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to the south, Gadchiroli of Maharashtra to the west and Odisha’s Malkangiri to the east.
A national security advisory board team headed by former diplomat Shyam Saran was on a daylong tour of Bastar today to study and suggest measures to tackle Left-wing insurgency.
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