India Maoists attack security forces camps

NEW DELHI, April 21 (UPI) -- India's Maoist rebels attacked four security forces camps in the eastern central state of Chhattisgarh where they had killed 75 government militia two weeks ago.

Gun battles continued for up to two hours Tuesday, the Central Reserve Police Force said. But there were no casualties on either side during attacks by up to 400 rebels in the Dantewada district in the early evening.

The attacks are the latest battles between security forces and the Maoists, often called Naxalites because they originated in the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal in India's remote forested and mineral-rich far eastern reaches.

The Naxalites are one of the larger splinter rebel groups from India's legal communist parties and have been fighting a low-level but sometimes deadly campaign against state and central governments since 1967.

They demand more of the wealth from the natural resources be spread among the poor. Many of the landless general population support the Naxalites against what they see as a central government neglecting their basic living, education and health needs.

Last weekend several Maoists dressed in CRPF uniforms fired at security guards of the former Border Security Force Director General E. N. Rammohan. He was in the district on a fact-finding tour as part of his report on the events that led up to the April 6 fatal attack when CRPF personnel were caught unaware in dense forest 3 miles from their base camp.

Only seven of the 82 militia survived. The dead included a deputy commandant and an assistant commandant of the CRPF and a head constable of the state police force.

The attack prompted the government to appoint Rammohan's inquiry the next day. Rammohan, 69, is examining the response of the state police and the CRPF both during the ambush and in the post-ambush rescue operations.

The attack by the Naxalites was a blow to efforts by the federal government to turn the tide in the decades-long battle that has picked up pace in the past year.

Upward of 6,000 people have died in Naxal attacks over the past two decades, Indian Ministry of Home Affairs figures indicate. But since 2004 on average of nearly 600 people have been killed each year, with a surge in deaths to 1,134 last year.

The dead soldiers were part of Operation Green Hunt, an ongoing military offensive by 50,000 CRPF soldiers and tens of thousands of regular policemen started last November to track down Naxalites within the so-called Red Corridor in eastern India.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram said on national television that something must have gone "drastically" wrong for the CRPF soldiers to have been ambushed in Chhattisgarh. He later offered his resignation over the ambush but it was rejected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"It was a huge comedown for a man whose tough talk and no-nonsense attitude after the (Nov. 26, 2008) terrorist attack on Mumbai earned him and his party, the Congress, handsome political dividends," an analysis by the Times of India said.

The ambush has highlighted the need for the government to open other avenues to end the fighting. Singh is said to have accepted an idea, long put forward the Minister for Tribal Affairs K. L. Bhuria, to form a National Tribal Advisory Council.

The council will be a platform for central and state governments to discuss issues concerning the welfare and development of tribal communities, The Times of India said. Bhuria's ministry has also been asked to fast-track a draft national tribal policy that has been in the making since 2006.