Suspected Maoist rebels blew up railroad tracks and a mobile tower in eastern India Monday, while police said they arrested seven of the insurgents elsewhere. The rebels have been fighting for more than three decades, demanding land and jobs for farmers and the poor. Over the past few years about 2,000 people _ including police, militants and civilians - have been killed in the violence. Dozens of rebels blew up a mobile tower in Palamu district and the rail track in Jharkhand state early Monday, disrupting train services for several hours, said S.N. Pradhan, a state police spokesman. The region is nearly 185 miles (300 kilometers) south of Patna, the capital of Bihar state. A police patrol arrested seven suspected rebels on the outskirts of Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state, and recovered a homemade bomb and more than 1,000 bullets from them, Pradhan said. The rebels called a two-day strike from Monday in five states - Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal - to protest the arrest last week of two of their senior members in the region. Buses, trucks and cars stayed off the road in the Maoist strongholds of Palamu, Latehar and Chatra districts in Jharkhand state, a police officer said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters. The rebels are called Naxalites after Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal state where the movement was born in 1967. They say they are inspired by Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
