By IANS,
Raipur : Heavily armed Maoist guerrillas Monday evening raided Essar Steel’s iron ore plant in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, set fire to 19 vehicles and damaged other vital technical equipment, the police said.
Dozens of Left insurgents stormed into Essar Steel’s iron ore plant located in the hilly Kirandul area in Dantewada district, 400 km south of capital Raipur, late in the evening, sources at the police headquarters here told IANS.
Soon after storming the plant, the rebels opened indiscriminate fire on labourers and employees and asked them to line up after snatching their mobile sets.
Rebels pumped out diesel from 19 vehicles parked at the plant complex and set them on fire. The Maoist rebels damaged several costly technical equipment.
Security reinforcements have been rushed to the attack site.
This is the second major attack on Essar Steel’s iron ore beneficiation plant in the last two months. In late April, the rebels had set on fire 53 trucks of the steel major.
Essar Steel supplies high quality iron ore from its 8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) iron ore plant to the pellet plant in Visakhapatnam. The iron ore slurry is pumped through a 267 km pipeline to the pellet plant.
Dantewada along with Bastar, Bijapur and Narayanpur districts is facing blackout since June 5 after rebels blasted off 220 KV power transmission towers.