As New Delhi intensifies efforts to put an end to the protracted insurgency, Indian security forces killed at least 12 Maoist militants in central India, according to authorities.
In their decades-long insurgency, the rebels claim to be fighting for the rights of marginalized Indigenous people, but more than 10,000 people have lost their lives.
The gunfight started Thursday in the insurgency’s heartland, the forested Bijapur district in the state of Chhattisgarh.
“We have received information of the killing of 12 Maoists in encounters with the security forces,” senior police official Sundarraj P told AFP.
According to government estimates, over 200 rebels have been murdered by security forces’ crackdown in the last year, with Chhattisgarh accounting for the vast majority of these deaths.
India’s interior minister, Amit Shah, stated last year that the administration anticipated putting an end to the uprising by 2026.
Over the years, government forces have been the target of several lethal strikes during the conflict.
At least nine Indian troops were killed by a roadside bomb earlier this month.
At least five guerillas were killed by Indian troops a week later, and two police officers were injured by a different bombing.
Twenty-two paramilitary and police personnel lost their lives in a gunfight with the far-left guerrillas in 2021.
In the run-up to the 2019 national elections, a bombing in the western state of Maharashtra claimed the lives of sixteen commandos and was attributed to the Maoists.
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