RAIPUR (India): Ten police and their driver were killed in India’s central Chhattisgarh state Wednesday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device, an attack police blamed on Maoist rebels.

India’s long-running Maoist insurgency began in the 1960s and has cost thousands of lives in the decades since, although violence has waned considerably in recent years.

Wednesday’s deaths were the worst casualties for security forces in more than two years and claimed the lives of police reservists returning from a mission to investigate rebel movements in remote Dantewada district.