RAIPUR (India): Ten police and their driver were killed in India`s central Chhattisgarh state on Wednesday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device, an attack police blamed on Maoist rebels.

India`s long-running Maoist insurgency began in the 1960s and has cost thousands of lives in the decades since, although violence has waned considerably in recent years.

Wednesday`s deaths were the worst casualties for security forces in more than two years and claimed the lives of police reservists returning from a mission to investigate rebel movements in remote Dantewada district.

`They were returning from an operation when the explosion took place targeting their vehicle,` senior Chhattisgarh police official Vivekanand, who uses only one name, said.

Footage aired on broadcaster NDTV showed a crater that stretched several feet into the earth, andsecurity forces inspecting mangled vehicle parts strewn about by the blast.

`I pay my tributes to the brave personnel we lost in the attack,` Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Twitter. `Their sacrifice will always be remembered.` Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel told reporters the attack was `very saddening` and pledged to redouble efforts to combat the state`s Naxalites, as India`s Maoist insurgents are known.

`This battle is in the last leg and we will not spare any Naxalites, and we will make a proper plan to wipe out Naxalism.` No rebel group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

India has deployed tens of thousands of forces to battle the rebels across the in sur ge ntd omin at e d region known as the `Red Corridor`, which stretches across several central, southern and eastern states. Naxal groups say they are fighting for rural people and the poor.-AFP