Indian authorities vowed Wednesday to hit back at Maoist rebels who killed 76 police in a brutally effective attack that undermined a months-long government offensive against the insurgents.
The massacre, in the central state of Chhattisgarh, was the biggest single blow that the Maoists have landed in their decades-long struggle against India's regional and central governments.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram, visiting the region, said the Maoists had executed a complex, multi-stage ambush in which a patrol was attacked and two sets of reinforcements had then come under heavy fire.
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The deaths had been caused by gunfire and crude bombs, he said.
Chidambaram said the government's long-standing offer of talks with the Maoists if they laid down their arms had been "answered by a savage and brutal act of violence".
"If this is a war -- and I would like to say this is a term we have never used -- it is a war which has been thrust upon the state," he said.
He said the army would not be sent in to fight the rebels but he declined to rule out using the air force.
The Chhattisgarh state police spokesman said Wednesday the death toll had risen to 76 -- 74 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officers and two other security force personnel.
The guerrillas have stepped up attacks in response to the government's "Operation Green Hunt" offensive, launched late last year in Maoist-hit areas across north and eastern India.
Tribal groups and many rural communities have been left behind by the country's rapid economic development, and poverty and discontent with corruption is seen as a major source of Maoist support.
Home Secretary Gopal K. Pillai said the left-wing rebels would pay a high price for the killings.
"In the days and months to come we will hunt everyone down," he said, adding that the government response would become "much firmer and fitting".
Indian newspapers voiced shock and anger over the massacre, with some urging the government to deploy the military.
"It's War!" thundered the front page headline in the Times of India which argued the jungle ambush had raised the stakes in the fight with the Maoists "to an unprecedented level".
"The Maoists have made their intentions clear. Dialogue will have to be off the table for now, until the state clearly establishes operational superiority," it said in an editorial.
The Times joined other newspapers in questioning how the rebels could kill almost an entire company of armed paramilitary personnel, and cited experts who said security forces were ill-equipped, under-trained and poorly informed.
The Maoist insurgency, which started as a peasant uprising in 1967, has spread to 20 of India's 29 states and has been identified by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the number one threat to domestic security.
The Hindustan Times suggested that the government needed to reconsider its decision not to use the national army.
"A military solution in tandem with state forces cannot be shelved indefinitely. This is a war," the paper said. "The time for rhetoric is over."
However Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik expressed grave reservations and said he was against any plans to use air strikes.
"The weapons we have are meant for the enemy across the border, so I am not in favour of the use of the air force," he told reporters.
