12 killed in India in 2 separate attacks

Two assailants with guns and grenades ambushed a police recruitment center in northern India early Tuesday in an attack that killed seven police officers and a civilian, a police official said.

In an unrelated attack in the east, suspected Maoist rebels shot dead four soldiers.

The assailants approached the gate of the station in Rampur and opened fire, killing two officers. The attackers then lobbed a grenade over the gate that killed five more officers, said Brij Lal, a senior police official in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

A rickshaw puller outside the gate was killed in the ensuing crossfire, Lal said.

The slain officers belonged to a special police force created to fight insurgents, Lal said. Police have cordoned off the site, about 190 miles southwest of the state capital of Lucknow.

Police did not say which group they suspected in the attack, but in the past authorities have blamed violence in the region on militants trying to spark unrest between India's Hindu majority and its Muslim minority.

In November, a series of bombs ripped through courthouse complexes in three northern Indian cities, including Lucknow, killing at least 16 lawyers and injuring nearly 60 others.

In the neighboring state of Bihar on Tuesday, suspected Maoist rebels ambushed a group of soldiers and shot dead four of them, said police official Anil Sinha.

In Bihar and several other eastern states, widespread poverty has fueled a lengthy insurgency by militants demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.