15 killed in Maoist attack at eastern India mine (Roundup)

Apr 13, 2009, 11:22 GMT

   New Delhi - Eleven security personnel and four Maoist rebels were killed in a 10-hour clash at India's largest bauxite mine in the eastern state of Orissa, police said Monday.

   A group of 100 armed Maoist rebels, including several women, laid siege to the state-run National Aluminium Company's (NALCO) bauxite mine at Panchpatmali in Koraput district, some 370 kilometres south-west of Orissa's capital Bhubaneshwar late Sunday.

   At least 60 mine employees, who were working on the night shift, were stuck at the mine until the combat ended in the early hours of Monday, IANS news agency quoted an official at the NALCO project as saying.

   The Maoists fled after 10 hours and all mine employees were safe, Koraput district police chief Deepak Kumar Chauhan said.

   He said the rebels also attacked a nearby outpost of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) which looks after security at the mine.

   'Eleven CISF personnel and four Maoists were killed,' he said. Bodies of the four rebels, one of them a woman, have been recovered.

   'Thirteen CISF men were injured. They were all part of the 25-strong contingent guarding the project site,' Chauhan said.

   Paramilitary and additional police forces were pursuing the rebels who are believed to fled into the surrounding jungle.

   'They may have been aiming to loot explosives stored at the mine or weapons of the CISF,' Chauhan said.

   The entire area was booby trapped with mines and roads were blocked by felled trees, making it difficult for police and military forces to reach the area, he said.

   The rebels also blew up a mobile telephone tower at the project site cutting off communication links.

   Maoist rebels, who operate in 13 of India's 29 states, have called for a boycott of the general elections which are scheduled to begin Thursday.

   Orissa's Koraput district is due to hold balloting on Thursday in the first phase of the five-phase elections.

   Maoist rebels have upped their attacks on government installations in Orissa and neighbouring Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh states in the run-up to the elections.

   The rebels, who operate in what has been labelled a 'red corridor' stretching from forest of southern Andhra Pradesh state to the border of Nepal, claim they are fighting for the rights of the rural poor and tribal people.

   According to independent estimates, more than 600 people including civilians, police and rebels were killed in Maoist violence in India in 2008.

   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as one of the gravest internal security threats facing India.