|
Patna: Maoist rebels fatally shot three villagers in eastern India on Friday, a police official said.
The rebels have considerable support among the area's impoverished villagers, whose rights they claim to champion. Sometimes, however, the insurgents attack people they consider police informers.
At least 30 rebels took part in the attack in a village in Bihar state near the border with Nepal, said Anil Kumar Sinha, the area's deputy superintendent of police.
State police scoured the vicinity for the rebels and sealed off the border area in an attempt to keep them from slipping into Nepal, Sinha said.
The rebels call themselves the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and are thought to have links with Maoists in Nepal, who fought an insurgency for years and recently entered mainstream politics.
Last week hundreds of Maoist rebels attacked four police stations, a training academy and an armoury in the eastern state of Orissa, killing 15 people including 13 police officers.
The guerrillas, often called Naxalites, say they are inspired by Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Their name comes from Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal state where the movement was born in 1967.
They have been fighting in several Indian states for at least three decades, demanding land and jobs for agricultural labourers and the poor.
The violence has killed about 2,000 people including police, militants and civilians over the past several years.
|
