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A joint patrol party of security personnel on Monday found a Maoist hideout that was used by the rebels as a camp in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district. The security personnel recovered 30 quintal of wheat from the hideout including country-made generators used for running the camp, welding machines, assorted wires among the numerous items. "State Police and CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) personnel were patrolling and during the patrolling, they found a Maoist camp. They found a generator, a welding machine, wheat and other food items, uniforms, wires, bows and arrows and various other things. These were later destroyed," said Avinash Mohanty, Superintendent of Police, Bijapur District. Carrying out the biggest attack of its kind, Maoists in Chhattisgarh ambushed at least 76 personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on April 06. On Monday (May 17), over 30 persons including policemen have been killed when the bus in which they were travelling hit a landmine planted by suspected Maoist rebels in the Dantewada region. The Maoists, described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the country's biggest internal security threat, started their armed struggle in Naxalbari town of West Bengal in 1967. Sources in the Union Home Ministry on Monday feared that the casualties of the IED blast in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada is likely to go high as the rescue and relief operations have been hampered due to bad light. Security forces have launched a major rescue operation. On Monday evening in one of the worst attack on civilians the Maoists blew up a private bus killing over 30 people. The bus was on its way from Dantewada to Sukma when the incident took place near Chingawaram, over nine kilometers from Sukma. The bus-CG17 SS 9295 was carrying 20 special police officers (SPO) and over 30 civilians.The SPOs were on their way to participate in a special recruitment drive. The latest blast incident has taken place a day after the Maoists called for a 48 hour shutdown in five states-Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. The sources said the attack might have been a pre -planned one. Reportedly, the Maoists also fired on the bus after the blast to ensure that nobody stays alive.

Maoists' hideout discovered in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district