Thursday,8 October 2009
Nagpur, Oct 8: 17 policemen were killed in a gunfight with Naxalites in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district Thursday, barely hours after Maoists set ablaze a gram panchyat office in the area.
The shootout, which lasted for over three hours, took place in a forest in Lehari in Bhamragarh taluka, police said.
A group of 200 Naxalites opened fire on a police party which was promptly returned, sources said, adding the exact condition of the injured policemen was not immediately known.
Earlier, Maoists had set ablaze a gram panchyat office in Gadchiroli district. The incident comes two days after the beheading of Jharkhand police officer Francis Induwar.
Home Minister P Chidambaram had Wednesday said the security forces will engage the Maoists till they abjure violence and the air force will take steps to protect itself from any Naxal attacks.
"As long as the CPI-Maoists believe in an armed liberation struggle, we have no option but to ask our security forces to engage them, we will arrest them, we will apprehend them," Chidambaram had said in Mumbai.
No comments:
Post a Comment