Land-Mine Blast Kills 13 in India

[Coventina]

Source: Wall Street Journal

NEW DELHI -- Suspected communist rebels blew up a police vehicle in India's restive east, killing at least 13 people, police said Monday.

The attackers detonated a land mine targeting a police patrol around midnight Sunday in Dhamtari district, 55 miles south of Raipur, the capital of Jharkhand state, said police officer G. R. Sahu.

Eleven police officers, one civilian driver and a member of a government-supported armed vigilante group that fights suspected rebels were killed, Mr. Sahu said. Mr. Sahu, blaming the attack on Maoist rebels, said the attackers escaped. The Press Trust of India news agency said another three police officers were injured in the attack.

The rebels are referred to as Naxalites, after Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal state where the movement was born in 1967. They say they are inspired by Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and have been fighting for more than three decades in several Indian states, demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124205340646806907.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[oxygen destroyer]

1. Indian Maoists seem to make the news a lot more lately

Why is that? Maybe it's because of the elections.