Raipur, March 18 (IANS) A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper was killed and two others were injured in a blast triggered by Maoists Thursday in a thickly forested area in Chhattisgarh.
"A CRPF head constable was killed and his two colleagues sustained injuries when Maoist militants attacked a CRPF contingent with an improvised explosives device (IED). They were on a road opening assignment," Avinash Mohanty, Bijapur district superintendent of police, told IANS over the phone.
He said Maoists targeted the troopers when they were passing through Awapalli-Basaguda road, about 500 km south of the state capital Raipur. Authorities were trying to bring the injured CRPF men to Bijapur town for urgent medical attention.
Bijapur along with Bastar, Dantewada, Narayanpur and Kanker comprise the 40,000 sq km Bastar region where Maoists have been running a parallel government since the late 1980s.
About 1,600 people have been killed since 2005 in Chhattisgarh in Maoist violence; of these, 90 percent casualties were reported from Bastar region, officials at the police headquarters here said.
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