Seven AP policemen killed in Naxal attack

According to sources, five policemen managed to escape and reach G K VeedhiPolice Station on Saturday morning. The dead included one assistantsub-inspector and two head constables. The victims belonged to the fifthbattalion of the APSP, Vizianagaram.

This is the second major incident after the Naxalites had attacked andkilled policemen and tribals while they were escorting ballot boxes atMandipet near Chintapalli in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections.

On Friday night the Naxalites split into three groups and climbed atop thequarters belonging to doctors at the primary health centre located oppositethe outpost with the help of a ladder. One of the groups first threw agrenade at the sentry guarding the PHC entrance, killing him on the spot.Hearing the explosion, the sentry outside the outpost opened fire killingone Naxalite.

Meanwhile, the other two groups approached the outpost throwing grenades.While some policemen managed to flee, others died in the attack. Thepolicemen were in the midst of their dinner and could neither escape norresist the attack effectively.

According to State Home Minister T Devender Goud, the Naxalites had fired atthe outpost from the top of the doctors’ quarters and the police could notfire back as there were chances that innocent people within the PHC couldget killed.

He said the police began firing at the Naxalites as they came down from thequarters but they were outnumbered and the extremists gained the upper handas according to him, there were 40 Naxalites and only 21 policemen at theoutpost. He said the main role was played by the Korukonda dalam of the PWG.The Naxalites seemed to have made their plans thoroughly and it was a lapseon the part of the police not to have any prior knowledge.

After the attack, the Naxalites took away 23 weapons, including lightmachine guns, one machine gun and rifles from the outpost.

As soon as the attack was over, two more teams of Naxalites blocked the roadto the outpost by placing tree trunks at Sapparla and Tuppulavada,preventing reinforcements from arriving either from G K Veedhi or Sileru.

At Sapparla, the Naxalites opened fire when they saw a constable inside anAPSRTC bus whose driver applied the brakes when he saw the tree trunksacross the road. The passengers had got down and were removing the treeswhen the Naxalites opened fire. The policeman fired back but was injured. Inthe crossfire, a woman passenger too was injured.

At Tuppulavada, the Naxalites opened fire when they saw a police vehicleapproaching them but there are no reports of any injuries.

Later, a police team rushed to the outpost and brought the wounded policemento Chintapalli from where they were flown in Navy helicopters toVisakhapatnam for treatment.

Home Minister Goud, Additional Director General of Police M A Basith andDistrict Superintendent of Police K Narasimha Reddy visited the site of theattack.