Heavily-armed Maoist rebels on Saturday killed 17 people, including 12 local Congress leaders, after ambushing a convoy in a remote tribal belt of central India, a top police officer said. "We can confirm 17 deaths. Among those who have been killed are five policemen. The rest are all leaders of the state Congress unit," Rajinder Kumar Vij, the chief of anti-naxal operations of Chhattisgrah state, told AFP.
The whereabouts of state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel and his son who were abducted during the attack were not known, Vij added. Former cabinet minister Vidya Charan Shukla was fighting for life after being wounded in the attack, carried out in a thickly forested area of Jagdalpur district, 284 kilometres (176 miles) from state capital Raipur. The rebels detonated a bomb before firing indiscriminately at the convoy, which was returning from a political rally nearby, police said. The attack is the latest in a simmering conflict that pits the insurgents against local and national authorities in the forests and rural areas of mainly central and eastern India.