Maoists have planned to unleash an intense Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign across the country starting from February and Sunday's ambush of 15 policemen in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district may be just the first of a wave of devastating attacks, highly placed police officials in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh said.
Two top leaders of a banned pro-Taliban group, which brokered the controversial Swat peace deal, were killed on Saturday in Pakistan's restive northwest, when militants ambushed a security forces' convoy transporting the detained extremists to a prison in Peshawar.Maulana Muhammad Alam, deputy chief of Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e- hariah Muhammadi which is headed by radical cleric Sufi Muhammad, and the group's spokesman Amir Izzat Khan were killed.
A day after killing seven policemen in an ambush in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, the Naxals on Sunday allegedly set ablaze at least 17 vehicles engaged in mining work in insurgency-hit Kanker district, police said.
Kavita Karkare, widow of Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad chief Hemant Karkare who was killed during the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, has died.
The workers have been hospitalised after they suffered series injuries in the ambush by more than 10 CPI-M workers over political rivalry.
Togo's soccer team flew home on Sunday after the deadly ambush of their team bus but the sports minister said they hoped to return to Angola, where Africa's biggest sports tournament got underway.
'Tanhaji has so much fun recreating a bygone legend and fictionalising history, authenticity and spellings, it gets infectious,' feels Sukanya Verma.
Hours after Naxals struck in a big way in Chhattisgarh on Friday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was briefed by Home Minister P Chidambaram on the incident and the strategy being adopted by his ministry to tackle the menace of naxalism in the wake of the worst-ever attack.
Tennis Australia will appeal the International Tennis Federation's (ITF) decision to confirm Chennai as the venue for next month's Davis Cup tie between India and Australia, citing security concerns, local media reported. Security worries have grown around sporting events in south Asia following the ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team bus in Lahore, Pakistan, by armed gunmen last month.
Less than a week after five soldiers were killed in an ambush at the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmi, Pakistan on Monday violated the bilateral ceasefire in the Poonch sector along the Line of Control, according to a defence spokesperson.
'The 20 minutes that they drove around was the worst in my life. I spent each of those minutes thinking that I could be killed any moment.'
If you ever thought that India's lawmakers could not get any worse, think again!
How should India respond to the killing of five soldiers along the Line of Control. Tell us.
The Goa chief minister said, "The surgical strikes against militants in PoK was planned 15 months in advance."
On the brink of capturing the entire rebel-held territory, Sri Lankan troops killed at least 150 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadres in the island's embattled north, where a ship carrying biggest-ever food supplies for displaced civilians was ambushed by suspected guerrillas, officials said on Sunday.
'If you accept that situation you don't require the judiciary, the criminal procedure law, the Indian Penal Code or even the Constitution because there is somebody who decides who gets to live and who gets to die.'
A pall of gloom descended on the airport as the plane landed.
Twelve Maoists were on Tuesday gunned down in an encounter with the police in Palamau district in Jharkhand.
Maoists on Thursday killed 17 policemen when they ambushed a police patrol in the dense forests of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra. The daring attack occurred when a police party of nearly 40 personnel came under heavy fire from 150-200 Maoists at approximately 1 pm near Laheri police station of the district, when it was returning after undertaking search operations, following an intelligence input that Maoists had assembled in the area.
A second armed attack in the space of a year on a bus carrying a national sports team has highlighted the vulnerability of top-level athletes and the publicity such ambushes attract. Two members of Togo's football delegation died when gunmen attacked the team bus on Friday as it travelled to the African Nations Cup in Angola. The driver was killed in the assault.
Manchester City striker and skipper of Togo Emmanuel Adebayor recounted the details of the horrific attack on the team bus and how he prayed to god to save his life.
A woman Maoist was killed and three security personnel injured in an exchange of fire between the two sides at Pallur in Koraput district in Orissa on Thursday morning. The exchange of fire took place when jawans of the Special Operation Group, the state's elite anti-Naxal force, were involved in a combing operation in Pallur area under Narayan Patna police station, said Y J Rao, sub-divisional police officer of Narayana Patna.
The final rites of late Congress leader and founder of controversial anti-Maoist Salwa Judum movement Mahendra Karma were performed with state honours at his native village in Dantewada district on Monday.
In a bid to protect its troops in insurgency-affected areas, the army is planning to procure over 800 light weight armoured vehicles to be used in vulnerable places.
The state police said that 24 of its men, including SP V K Choubey, were killed when Maoists ambushed a party led by him while it was on the way to a police camp at Madanwada where the militants had killed two of its personnel on Sunday.
The 2010 Commonwealth Games should remain in India despite growing concerns about security in the country and neighbouring Pakistan, a top Australian sports official said on Wednesday. Speculation about the Games, which are due to be held in New Delhi from October 3-14, 2010, has intensified since last year's attacks on Mumbai and Tuesday's bloody ambush of the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan.
Unidentified gunmen riding on motorcycles ambushed an army vehicle in the Pakistani capital on Thursday, unleashing a hail of bullets that killed a brigadier and his guard and injured another soldier, in the latest in a wave of deadly attacks targeting the security forces
The first group of securitymen arrived at Lalgarh police station, which had been cut off by the tribals since November last year, with the police saying that it was a 'partial victory'.
Turns out that "sapinda" ('spinda' being, I assume, the pronunciation of whichever Punjabi wrote the form) is a blood relationship of a certain order: five generations of ascent on the paternal side, three on the maternal side. Turns out they were asking, on that government form, whether ours was an incestuous relationship, as defined by a very complicated set of Hindu social rules.
The 10 policemen, who were ambushed by Maoists in a remote Bihar village on Monday, flouted standard guidelines issued by the district administration, government officials said on Tuesday."We had asked the police department not to participate in functions in remote villages and not accept any request to become the chief guest of any function there. It is one of the basic and standard warnings that we give to the policemen," Nawada District Magistrate Yogendra Bhakt said.
Tension in the state escalated after militants ambushed Manipur Police and other state forces in the last few days that left three policemen dead and 14 others injured last Thursday.
Here's the chronological list of all major terror attacks on security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in the last two decades.
'Maoists are enraged that the media is reporting the truth.' 'They want to physically isolate the media and psychologically isolate the villagers who have found the confidence to speak to the press about the real situation.' 'Like terrorism ended in Punjab, Naxalism will end in Chhattisgarh,' the AIIMS doctor-turned IPS officer and SP of Dantewada tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih.
Ahead of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's rallies in Chhattisgarh on Wednesday, security forces averted a possible landmine explosion, as they diffused two Improvised Explosive Devices weighing 50 kg in the Dantewada area of the state.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday called Maoists a 'national challenge' which he said the government has accepted and will fight it. On a day-long visit to Chhattisgarh, a day after Maoists killed 14 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Sukma district, he also announced a compensation of Rs 38 lakh each to the kin of victims of the Naxal ambush and Rs 65,000 each to the injured.
Stepping up the momentum of their advance to capture the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam stronghold of Kilinochchi, the Lankan troops on Tuesday claimed to have killed scores of rebels after smashing through a string of LTTE bunkers. Government troops of the 53 Division, advancing from Kilaly village near Jaffna, carried out the ambush in the morning, a defence ministry official said
"The boat has been traced deep inside the Balimela reservoir in Malkangiri district," said deputy inspector general, South-Western range, Sanjeev Panda, adding that the body of two missing commandoes has been extracted from the waters.
Bodies of 11 hostages, slain after their abduction last week, were recovered from two different sites of the Kurram tribal region in Pakistan. The bodies were recovered on Monday, claimed local media reports.Unidentified assailants shot dead eight persons and threw their bodies in a deserted place near Faqir Khamsa village in lower Kurram area. All the slain persons were kidnapped by unidentified miscreants, during an ambush on a trucks convoy carrying foodstuff.
Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said the assault is being investigated as a hate crime.
The 2010 Commonwealth Games will adopt security methods similar to those used at last year's Beijing Olympics, its chief said on Wednesday, allaying fears the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team could scupper the event. Commonwealth Games Federation chairman Suresh Kalmadi said 'modern methods' which were also used in the Beijing Olympics last year will be adopted.
