At least 18 people, including a former minister's son, were killed overnight when Maoist rebels opened fire on a group of football spectators in eastern India, a police official said yesterday. Between 30 and 40 heavily armed rebels stormed a village around midnight and opened fire on about 150 people gathered there after a match to watch a local cultural performance, police said. "Seventeen persons have been killed in the attack," district police superintendent Arun Kumar Singh told AFP in Jharkhand state.
One man died later of a bullet wound, taking the toll to 18, police said, adding that a three-year-old was among the three remaining wounded. "Intensive combing operations are going on," Singh said, adding that the border with Bihar, the state to the north, had been sealed to prevent rebels from fleeing there.
The night's entertainment was organised by the brother of the former chief minister Babu Lal Marandi, whose son Anup Marandi was in Chilkhari village for the match. "The police security personnel deployed left the place after the football match," said Singh. "They did wrong. They should have stayed."
The attack echoed the assassination of federal lawmaker Sunil Mahto, who was gunned down by Maoists posing as spectators at a football match in a village in the state in March. The attackers, including several women, wore fatigues similar to those used by India's anti-terror paramilitary forces and gradually surrounded the unsuspecting crowd before opening fire, witnesses said.