Maoist rebels kill 16 police in Maharashtra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Sixteen police are feared dead after they were ambushed by Maoist rebels in Maharashtra on Thursday, police said, the latest in a series of attacks which hit India's recent general election.

"Sixteen policemen perhaps have been killed, I have got the information," Pankaj Gupta, a senior state police official, told CNN-IBN news channel. "Trees were felled and put across the road, and it was obviously a trap it seems."

Dozens of people have died in recent weeks while Maoist violence marred India's month-long general election. The rebels attacked security forces and polling officials, bombed civic buildings and urged voters to boycott the poll.

The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers and the landless.

Thousands have been killed in the Maoist insurgency in India which began in the late 1960s, and which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as one of the gravest threats to India's internal security.