Seven members of a polling team and five CRPF personnel were among 14 killed as Maoists struck twice in less than an hour in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, just two days after peaceful elections were held in the region.

In the first incident on Saturday, armed rebels numbering close to 100 triggered a landmine blast to target a passenger bus in Bijapur district and then showered bullets on it, killing seven poll officials on board and injuring five. The poll officials were returning to the district headquarters.

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Sri Lanka’s military said on Friday it had killed three ethnic Tamil separatist militants, the first combat since government troops crushed the rebels in a 2009 offensive.

The government, heavily criticized by Western governments and the United Nations for alleged rights abuses in 2009, said the clash showed Tamil rebels were re-emerging in Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil dominated north.

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Heavy fighting between government forces and troops from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) displaced more than 300 local residents in eastern Kachin State on Thursday.

The fighting began Thursday morning when government troops attacked KIA Third Brigade positions close to Mai Ja Yang, the second-largest town controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), aid workers operating in the area told The Irrawaddy. The KIO is the political wing of the KIA.

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United Baloch Army (UBA) - a separatist militant outfit in Balochistan - has claimed responsibility of deadly terrorist attack in the Sabzi Mandi area of the capital city that killed at least 24 people and wounded more than 115.

Speaking to media representatives over telephone, spokesman for UBA Mureed Baloch said the rebel Baloch group has carried out the attack in retaliation to military’s ongoing operation in Balochistan’s Kalat district.

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Indian government forces engaged suspected rebels in a fierce gunbattle overnight that left two rebels dead along with an Indian soldier and two police officers in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, officials said Tuesday.

The fighting erupted Monday night after army soldier and police began searching for suspected militants in Zumreshi village, about 120 kilometers northwest of Srinagar, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nitin Narahar Joshi said.

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