(CNN) — At slightest 20 military officers were feared killed Tuesday in a Maoist raid in a Indian state of Chhattisgarh, authorities said.

“Unconfirmed sources tell us 20 policemen have mislaid their lives,” pronounced Arun Dev Gautam, a state military examiner general.

The morning conflict targeted a military confidence group of about 40 crew in Sukma district, he said.

Gautam didn’t order out a use of landmines in a conflict believed to engage 200 insurgent fighters.

The Maoists ambushed a military team, that enclosed state and armed sovereign personnel, as it supposing confidence to construction workers, he said.

At a military discussion in New Delhi in November, India’s home apportion Sushil Kumar Shinde described a rebels as a “major threat” to inhabitant security.

At slightest 97 confidence crew and as many guerrillas were killed in Maoist assaults final year, he said.

The rebels, officials say, aim to seize energy by an armed ransom struggle.

Since a 1960s, a militants have pronounced they are fighting for a dispossessed.

Authorities think that Maoists suffer support not usually in a lowest areas and in genealogical communities, though also among girl and intellectuals.

In further to targeting police, purported military informers and people they call “class enemies,” a insurgents also conflict infrastructure such as roads, bridges, railways, and energy and telecommunication networks.

In 2013: Indian politician suffered heartless diagnosis in Maoist attack