Twelve paramilitary troopers were killed and 11 injured when their vehicle hit a landmine planted by Maoist rebels in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, news reports said yesterday.
The troopers were killed on Saturday evening in a forested area of Tongapal in Dantewada district, about 500km south of the state capital Raipur, IANS and PTI news agencies reported.
A 40-member squad of the Central Reserve Police Force and district police was returning to base camp after searching for Maoist rebels, police said.
The victims were traveling in a truck which hit the landmine. Seven men died on the spot and four on their way to hospital, TJ Longkumer, inspector general of police, said.
“One more succumbed to injuries midnight at the hospital where 11 men were rushed in a critical condition,” Longkumer said.
He said the toll could go up as some policemen were still missing.
“We have rushed extra police forces to the attack site,” Longkumer said.
The police team was returning from a village in the Tongepal area after receiving information that the Maoist rebels had set fire to some trucks used in road construction.
An unnamed local police official was quoted as saying rebels burned the trucks to lure the soldiers into an ambush in Bastar area of the Dantewada forests.
Chhattisgarh police estimate that roughly 10,000 rebels operate in the southern part of the state that includes Dantewada and Bijapur districts.
Maoists guerrillas operate in 13 of India’s 29 states. The Bastar region, which has a large tribal population and poor development, is one of their strongholds, authorities say.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS