Raipur, July 12 - Maoists Sunday made one of their deadliest strikes in Chhattisgarh, killing at least 25 policemen, including a district superintendent of police, in an ambush in a forested stretch.

The attack took place in the Manpur belt, some 200 km from here, in the Rajnandgaon district, bordering Maharashtra.

'A contingent of the District Force (DF) and Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF) drove into a booby trap laid by Maoists in a thickly forested area in Rajnandgaon district, in which 25 jawans were killed,' Girdhari Nayak, additional director general of police, told IANS.

Rajnandgaon District Superintendent of Police Binod Kumar Choubey was among the deceased. This is for the first time in an over three-decade-old Maoist militancy in Chhattisgarh that an official of the superintendent of police rank was killed by the radical Leftists.

'Over 200 heavily armed cadres of the CPI-Maoist's People's Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) first attacked the SP's convoy comprising about 100 policemen with powerful land mines and then opened indiscriminate firing,' a police officer based at Rajnandgaon said.

'Though policemen returned fire, they were soon overpowered by highly militarised PLGA fighters,' the officer said.