At least ten soldiers and a driver died this Wednesday following the explosion of a Maoist guerrilla explosive device in Chhattisgarh state, in eastern India.

“I’m sorry to hear about death of ten members of our District Reserve Guard (DRG) and driver due to the explosion of an explosive device,” Chhattisgarh Prime Minister Bhupesh Bahel said in a statement.

The event took place this afternoon in the Dantewada district, in the Aranpur district where, according to Bagel, security forces carried out an operation against the Naxalite insurgency, as the local Maoists are known, having been informed of the presence of dignitaries of this movement.

Following the news of the attack, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the incident on Twitter and offered his condolences to the families of the victims.

For his part, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said on Twitter that he had provided “all possible assistance to the state government.”

In November 2021, security forces killed a high-ranking Maoist commander and 25 other insurgents in a massive police operation against the movement in the state of Maharashtra, destroying, according to authorities, the “backbone” of the Naxalite movement.

The Naxalite movement, so named because it originated after an uprising in the Bengali village of Naxalbari in 1967, seeks to impose a Maoist-style agrarian revolution and continues to operate after half a century of operations, especially in the so-called “red belt”, a strip of territory running through the central and eastern India.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 42 people (including 20 civilians, 9 security forces and 13 guerrillas) have died in Maoist-related incidents this year, up from 135 in 2022 and 237 in 2022. 2021.

In total, about 12,000 people, mostly civilians, have died as a result of the insurgency in India over the past decades, and the Maoists have been declared the main threat to internal security, although in recent years they have been losing power.

(EFE)