RAIPUR: At least 12 Maoist insurgents were shot dead by Indian security forces on Friday, police said, during the latest clash in a decades-long conflict waged in the country’s central forests.

The guerrillas were killed in a remote part of Chhattisgarh state, where there have been a number of deadly assaults on rebel encampments this year.

“The bodies of 12 Maoists have been recovered during the search operation,” local police chief Vivekananda Sinha told AFP.

Sinha said security forces had cordoned off a forested area in Bijapur district after receiving intelligence that insurgent cadres were meeting there.

Two members of the Indian security forces had been wounded by homemade bombs during the clash but neither was in a dangerous condition, he added.

Search operations were continuing in the area, Sinha said.

29 Maoist rebels killed in clash with Indian security forces

More than 100 Maoists have been killed in India this year, according to police figures, the vast majority in Chhattisgarh.

The insurgents, who are known as Naxalites and say they are fighting for the rural poor, have been carrying out guerrilla attacks since 1967.

India has deployed tens of thousands of security personnel to battle the Maoist rebels across the insurgent-dominated “Red Corridor”, which stretches across central, southern and eastern states but has shrunk considerably over the past decade.

It has also pumped millions of dollars into infrastructure development in remote areas and claims to have confined the insurgency to 45 districts in 2023, down from 96 in 2010.

Twenty-two police and paramilitaries were killed in a gun battle with the far-left guerrillas in 2021.

In March 2020, 17 police from a commando patrol were killed in an attack by more than 300 armed rebels in Chhattisgarh.

Sixteen commandos were also killed in the western state of Maharashtra in a bomb attack that was blamed on the Maoists in the lead-up to India’s election in 2019.