40 policemen missing after rebel attack

Forty police officers were feared drowned in eastern India on Sunday after a group of suspected communist rebels attacked a police boat, capsizing it in a rushing river, a local official said.

More than 50 police officers were on the boat in the state of Orissa when the suspected rebels attacked, said local police official Satish Kumar Gajbhiya.

About 16 officers made it to shore, but 40 were still missing and feared drowned, he said. Authorities were searching the river for them.

The attack occurred on the Machakund river in Malkangiri district, 375 miles south of Bhubaneswar, the state capital.

Authorities were investigating the incident, but Gajbhiya said they suspected the communist rebels.

The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting for more than three decades in several Indian states, demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.

They are called Naxalites after Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal state where the movement was born in 1967.

Over the past few years about 2,000 people - including police, militants and civilians - have been killed in the violence.

The rebels often target local police departments, which are generally sparsely furnished outposts in remote jungle areas. In February, rebels launched coordinated attacks on four police stations, a training academy and an armory, killing 15 people.

Last year, 55 policemen and government-backed militiamen were killed when hundreds of rebels attacked an isolated police station in eastern Chhattisgarh state in one of the bloodiest attacks of the insurgency.