The ‘dance of death’ unleashed by Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada on Wednesday left 10 security personnel and a driver dead.

Reports said the attack took place after the policemen were returning from an anti-Maoist operation that was launched after intelligence inputs.

Since 1967, threat of Maoists has been looming large over parts of Central and Eastern India, with Maoists claiming that they have been fighting “war of poor” in the country. Chhattisgarh falls under “Red Corridor” which spans across the country’s 10 states.?

Here we look at the deadly Maoist attacks that have taken place in Chhattisgarh:

April 2010: 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and a state police cop were killed in an ambush on April 6, 2010, in what is considered the country's worst Maoist attack ever, in the thick Mukrana forests of Dantewada district.

May 2013: Around 250 Maoists in civilian clothes struck a convoy of Congress leaders during the party's rally in Chhattisgarh's Jagdalpur on May 25, 2013, killing at least 25 people, including then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel and senior party leader Mahendra Karma.

April 2017: 25 soldiers, including the company commander, were killed in a deadly Maoist ambush on April 24, 2017. The well-planned massacre was carried out by a group of hundreds of Maoists.

March 2020: 17 security personnel, including several District Reserve Guard (DRG) and Special Task Force (STF) personnel, were killed in a gunbattle with Maoists in forests of Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Sukma district on March 21, 2020.

April 2021: 22 security personnel were killed in an ambush by some 400 insurgents who surrounded the jawans from three sides in an area devoid of vegetation and rained on them machinegun fire as well as IEDs for several hours in the state's Bastar region on April 4, 2021.

June 2022: ?Three CRPF personnel were killed in a Maoist ambush at a security post at the Chhattisgarh-Odisha border on June 21, 2022.