In a major attack days before the assembly polls, Maoist guerrillas Thursday ambushed a police patrol and gunned down at least 17 policemen in a jungle stretch of Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district. Suspected Maoists also slit the throat of a police informer and dumped his body in the same district, police said.

The massacre occurred about a kilometre from Laheri village in Bhamragad sub district when the policemen were passing through thick forests in search of hidden Maoists, an official of the Gadchiroli district police told IANS.