Maoist rebels blew up three mobile phone towers, destroyed railway tracks and forced shops to close during a day-long strike in the eastern Indian state of Bihar on Monday, police said. The Maoist violence - estimated to have caused 600 to 700 deaths annually and displaced 100,000 civilians - has spread to more than 180 of India's 602 districts and has been declared as the country's single biggest internal security threat.

The rebels also torched two lorries and kept cars and buses off the road in rural parts of the state to protest the arrest of a top-ranking Maoist commander over the weekend. Police said the mobile phone towers belonged to the Indian telecom companies Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications. "They (Maoists) have torched two lorries, blasted three mobile towers...," a senior police official Ranjan Kumar said by phone. "Mobile networks are badly disturbed." India's estimated 22,000 Maoist combatants say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and landless labourers. They routinely call strikes, attack railway lines and factories, aiming to cripple local economic activity.

Copyright Reuters, 2010