RAIPUR, Nov 2: At least 18 policemen were feared killed in a Maoist rebel ambush on Friday in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, officials said.

The attack took place in the state’s rebel-infested Bijapur district, a senior police officer said in the Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur.

“Until we retrieve all the bodies we cannot say for sure they are all dead,” he said, preferring not to be named.

The victims were deployed in a 23-man anti-Maoist patrol in the forests of Bijapur, where an unspecified number of guerrillas attacked them with firearms, he added.

“Five of the men have returned after the ambush,” he said, adding reinforcements were being rushed to the scene of the ambush.

The attack follows two separate gun-battles in which five policemen and four Maoist rebels were killed in Chhattisgarh and in the nearby revolt-hit Jharkhand state.

In an attack on Monday, left-wing guerrillas fired at a police patrol in Chhattisgarh, killing five.

In another incident, four Maoist rebels died in a gun-battle with police in Jharkhand, where guerrillas killed 23 people over the weekend, including a former minister’s son.—AFP