Maoist guerrillas blew up a bus in a forested stretch of Chhattisgarh Monday. Around 50 people, including security personnel and civilians, were feared dead in the attack.

The bus flew about 20 feet in the air and toppled, killing most of its about 55 occupants, when the Maoists detonated a lethal improvised explosive device on a metalled road linking Dantewada and Sukma towns, about 450 km south of state capital Raipur.

"The bus has been completely destroyed. There is a 10-feet deep crater," one of the locals told IANS. "We can see 20 to 30 bodies. They are lying all around the site."