BHUBANESWAR (India), June 29: At least 40 members of an elite Indian anti-insurgency unit were missing in the east of the country on Sunday after their boat capsized following an attack by Maoist rebels, police said.

The boat came under heavy rebel fire while patrolling a reservoir near Malkangiri in the south of the coastal state of Orissa, police said.

Eight policemen managed to swim ashore and were taken to hospital, four of them to be treated for gunshot wounds, police said. No bodies have yet been found, although rescue officials recovered some police caps.

“The boat capsized after insurgents started firing indiscriminately at the Greyhound force,” Malkangiri police superintendent Satish Kumar Gajbhiye told AFP by telephone from the area.

Officials said helicopters had been sent to the area to search for any police who may have survived in the 40-metre deep reservoir. Witnesses, however, said police had little hope of finding many more people alive.

The remote district, on the border with the insurgency-hit states of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, is in the heart of an eastern swathe of the country where the Maoists are active.—AFP