Activists from India’s Congress party shout slogans and wave placards as they take part in a protest in Allahabad yesterday, after a Maoist attack on Congress party leaders in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Photo: AFP
A heavily-armed gang of nearly 300 Maoist rebels killed at least 23 people in an attack on a convoy carrying local Congress party leaders and supporters in central India, police said yesterday. The land mine and gun attack on Saturday was the deadliest in three years.
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who rushed to the Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the ambush, condemned what she called a “cowardly act” by the Maoists.
“It is not an attack on Congress or its leaders, but an attack on democratic values,” she told Congress party workers after visiting the injured, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Narendra Modi, senior leader of the main national opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, slammed the attack and called for unity against “naxalism”.
State Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh, and former state home minister Mahendra Karma-who had set up a controversial anti-Maoist group in 2005-were among those killed in the assault in a remote tribal belt of the state.
Source: The Daily Star
