About 200 Maoist rebels, some armed with AK-47s assault rifles, attacked a mining unit of India's largest aluminium and copper producer, shutting down its operations, a company official and police said on Monday. The raid took place on Saturday night at the Samri aluminium mining unit of Hindalco Industries Ltd, 495 km (307 miles) north-east of Raipur, capital of the Chhattisgarh state in central India, one of the country's poorest states. Hindalco said its national operations would not be affected as the company had other captive mines across the country.
"They used bulldozers to demolish buildings including the laboratory, staff quarters, office buildings and a guest house," an Hindalco spokeswoman said by telephone from the company's corporate headquarters in Bombay, India's commercial capital.
They also burnt a company jeep and damaged another, she said.
Police said the Maoists used Hindalco's own bulldozers to bring down the buildings at the Samri mines.
Maoists insurgents, who say they are fighting for the rights of landless agricultural workers and marginal farmers, operate in several states in central, eastern and southern India.
Thousands of people have died in the past four decades in Maoist violence in India including hundreds of policemen, landlords and government officials besides the insurgents themselves.