New Dehli, India ? Suspected communist rebels bombarded a police post in the remote jungles of eastern India with gunfire, hand grenades and gasoline bombs Thursday, killing at least 49 people in one of the bloodiest attacks of the decades-long insurgency.

The assault was the latest in a series of brazen attacks by the Maoist rebels, who hold sway over a wide swath of grindingly poor forest communities and farming villages largely left out of India’s economic boom.

There’s little fear the insurgency could destabilize all of India. But the rebels are a major disruptive force across a so-called “red corridor” stretching from India’s central hinterlands to its east coast, and their attacks are growing more sophisticated – and deadly.

Equipped with rifles, hand grenades and homemade gasoline bombs, the Maoists surrounded a remote police post around 2:30 a.m., apparently catching the 79 officers there by surprise, police officer N.K. Swarnkar said. At least 49 were killed and 12 were wounded, authorities said.

Before fleeing with weapons stolen from the post, the attackers scattered land mines across the area to stop the surviving officers from giving chase, Swarnkar said.

However, by midday, police reinforcements had reached the post and were fanning out into the jungle to search for the attackers.

The post is near the isolated village of Rani Bodli in the state of Chattisgarh, nearly 930 miles southeast of New Delhi. Swarnkar cautioned it could be days before full details of the attack emerge.

The forests of central India have been a haven for the rebels since the insurgency erupted in 1967 in the village of Naxalbari in eastern India.