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Agence France-Presse

Indian security forces killed a top Maoist commander and two other rebels in a gun battle on Monday, officials said, as the government intensifies efforts to crush the decades-long conflict.
India is waging an all-out offensive against the last remaining traces of the Naxalite rebellion, named after the village in the foothills of the Himalayas where the Maoist-inspired guerrilla movement began nearly six decades ago.
More than 12,000 rebels, soldiers and civilians have been killed since a handful of villagers rose up against their feudal lords there in 1967.
The latest gun battle took place early on Monday in the mineral-rich eastern state of Jharkhand, India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) said in a statement.


The federal police described the operation as a “major breakthrough”.
Three “top Naxal commanders” were killed in the fight, the CRPF said, including Sahdev Soren, who was part of the central committee of the Maoist organisation.
Authorities had issued a bounty of around US$113,000 for his capture.
Last week, forces killed another Maoist commander and nine others in a fierce gun battle along the forested border between the states of Odisha and Chhattisgarh.


The Indian government has vowed to crush the rebellion by the end of March next year.
The rebellion controlled nearly a third of the country with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 fighters at its peak in the mid-2000s.
A crackdown by Indian troops across the “Red Corridor” has killed more than 400 rebels since last year, according to government data.
The group’s chief, Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju, was gunned down in May, along with 26 other guerrillas.
The conflict has also seen several deadly attacks on government forces. A roadside bomb killed at least nine Indian troops in January.


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Indian forces kill top Maoist commander who had US$113,000 bounty on his head

Indian military personnel patrol in Jharkhand state during an earlier operation against Maoist rebels. Photo: AFP

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An injured member of the CRPF lies on a stretcher at Jagdalpur hospital in Bastar. Maoist rebels killed 26 police officers in an ambush in central India, a senior policeman told AFP, in the latest of a series of deadly strikes on security forces by the insurgents. "At least 26 security forces were killed and several injured," Ram Niwas, the head of anti-Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh state, said in state capital Raipur. / AFP PHOTO / STR

  2 of 4 SCMPOST FE In the district of Bastar six hours walk into the jungle a Naxalite Maoist memorial sits. The hindi script honours three Naxalite women who were raped and killed by the Salwa Judam and police. It says 'The martyrdom will not be in vain' and 'Long live the people's guerilla army'.

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Paramilitary personnel guard a train at latehar, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, Tuesday, March 14, 2006. Naxalite rebels who claim to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, seized a passenger train in eastern India overnight but fled and left passengers unharmed by the time police and soldiers reached the train early Tuesday, officials said. (AP Photo/Sasanka Sen)

Members of Naxalites, officially the Communist Party of India (Maoist) that takes its name from the Naxalbari, a village outside Calcutta where the revolt began in 1967, exercise at a temporary base in the Abujh Marh forests, in the central Indian state of Chattisgarh, April 13, 2007. Over the past four decades, this Maoist army with 10,000-15,000 fighters using old or handmade guns, has taken root in places forgotten during India's spectacular economic rise, creating an archipelago of rebel territory scattered across nearly half of the country's 28 states. In the past two years, nearly 2,000 people, police, militants, and civilians caught in the middle, have been killed in Naxalite violence. (AP Photo/Mustafa Quraishi)

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A senior Maoist commander and two others were killed in Jharkhand state as India wages an all-out offensive to crush the rebellion


A senior Maoist commander and two others were killed in Jharkhand state as India wages an all-out offensive to crush the rebellion.


War and conflict

Terrorism

Indian forces kill top Maoist commander who had US$113,000 bounty on his head

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A senior Maoist commander and two others were killed in Jharkhand state as India wages an all-out offensive to crush the rebellion

A senior Maoist commander and two others were killed in Jharkhand state as India wages an all-out offensive to crush the rebellion