RAIPUR (India), July 10: More than 40 troops and Maoist rebels were killed in one of the deadliest clashes to date in revolt-hit central India, officials said Tuesday.

Vishwa Ranjan, police chief of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, said 44 bodies found so far at the site of the savage gunbattle included the corpses of 24 troops and 20 Maoist insurgents.

“A search is now on for our remaining men missing in the area,” Ranjan said in state capital Raipur, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) from Dantewada district, where the clashes occurred late on Monday and Tuesday.

A 115-strong security contingent was rushed to Dantewada on Monday to target a suspected Maoist outpost.

Officials spoke of fierce fighting in the jungles of Dantewada, a sprawling tribal district where the outlawed guerrillas hold absolute sway.

“Both the sides used mortars and light machine guns,” a senior state security officer said in Raipur.

The troops were sent following a tip-off on the whereabouts of a rebel camp in Chhattisgarh.

“It looks like it was a set-up,” a federal home ministry official said — referring to what appeared to be a well-planned ambush by the increasingly active ultra-leftist rebels. The officials said the soldiers appeared to have been outnumbered by five to one.

Maoist rebels operate in 14 of India's 29 states, with their area of activity spanning from the border with Nepal down to Andhra Pradesh state in the south.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year described them as the most serious threat to national security.

New Delhi earlier on Tuesday deployed two combat helicopters to search for the missing troops in the heavily wooded area.

In March, 55 policemen were killed in the worst-ever Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh.

That attack followed the murder of federal MP Sunil Mahato in adjoining Jharkhand state — the first assassination of a national-level politician by the outlawed Maoists.Indian experts say the increased Maoist attacks are part of a radical leftwing drive to force security forces on the defensive.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in Chhattisgarh by the conflict and are now living in shelters as Indian counter-insurgency forces operate in the lawless countryside.

India's Congress party-led government is propped up by national communist parties, with some of them suspected to have close ideological ties with the outlawed Maoists.—AFP