Indian police kill a dozen communist rebels during firefight in Jharkhand

BAKORIA, India, June 9 (UPI) -- Indian police shot and killed 12 communist insurgents in the eastern province of Jharkhand on Tuesday, according to reports.

The left-wing rebels, known as "Naxalites," after the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal where the movement began in the 1960s, base their political ideology on the teachings of Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. The group is associated with the now-banned Communist Party of India.

In 2009 the rebels were reportedly active in 22 of India's 28 states, but efforts against them have reduced their presence to at least 10 states within what is called the "Red Corridor," the International Business Times reports.

On early Tuesday Indian police were tightening security at or near the village of Bakoria in the Palamau district of Jharkand following a tip-off that the rebels were planning to extort money from local miners, according to Indian media.

Two rebel vehicles approached a police checkpoint in the area, and one sped off as fighters clad in olive-drab fatigues dismounted the other and engaged officers. Police say they killed 12 of the rebels, including two teenage boys, Director General of Jharkhand Police DK Pandey told the Hindustan Times.

The firefight lasted two hours and netted eight weapons and about 200 rounds of ammunition, police say.

Among the dead was a Naxalite leader with a bounty on his head of 500,000 Indian rupees, or about $7,800, for planting a bomb inside the corpse of a police constable in 2013.

Indian media reports a Naxalite presence in all 24 of Jharkand's districts. In April 2014, the rebels reportedly killed six police officers in an ambush in the province's Dumka district.

Tuesday's incident comes less than a week after a militant ambush killed 20 Indian soldiers in the Chandel district of India's northeast Manipur state, near the country's border with Myanmar. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but officials suspect it could have been perpetrated by one or more rebel groups in the region, including the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), the People's Liberation Army of Manipur (PLA), the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).