<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>At least seven Maoist insurgents were shot dead by Indian security forces today, police told AFP, the latest clash in a decades-long conflict waged in the country’s wild central forests.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>The guerrillas were killed in a remote part of the central state of Chhattisgarh, which has been the site of a number of deadly assaults on rebel encampments this year.</div><div><br></div><div>Security deployments in the state have been bolstered in the past month with India currently in the middle of a six-week general election.</div><div><br></div><div>“Bodies of seven Maoists have been recovered,” Bastar district police inspector-general Sundarraj Pattilingam told AFP.</div><div><br></div><div>Two of the cadres killed were women, he said, adding that a large quantity of weapons including automatic firearms had been recovered.</div><div><br></div><div>Today’s clash was the third of its kind this month in the state, after the killing of 29 Maoist guerrillas on April 16 and another 13 on April 2.</div><div><br></div><div>Around 90 Maoists have been killed in India this year, according to police figures, the vast majority in Chhattisgarh.</div><div><br></div><div>The insurgents, who are known as Naxalites and say they are fighting for the rural poor, have carried out guerrilla attacks since 1967.</div><div><br></div><div>India has deployed tens of thousands of security personnel to battle Maoist rebels across the insurgent-dominated “Red Corridor”, which stretches across central, southern and eastern states but has shrunk considerably in size over the past decade.</div><div><br></div><div>India has pumped millions of dollars into infrastructure development in remote areas and claimed to have confined the insurgency to 45 districts in 2023, down from 96 in 2010.</div><div><br></div><div>The conflict has seen a number of deadly attacks on government forces over the years.</div><div><br></div><div>Twenty-two police and paramilitaries were killed in a gun battle with the far-left guerrillas in 2021.</div><div><br></div><div>In March 2020, 17 police from a commando patrol were killed in an attack by more than 300 armed rebels in Chhattisgarh.</div><div><br></div><div>Sixteen commandos were also killed in the western state of Maharashtra in a bomb attack that was blamed on the Maoists in the lead-up to India’s election in 2019. - AFP&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd/fas</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style="white-space: pre; white-space: normal;">			</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre; white-space: normal;">					</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre; white-space: normal;">						</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre; white-space: normal;">		</span></div>