Five security personnel were killed and two others injured on Tuesday when Maoist rebels triggered a powerful landmine blast at Golavand village near Mordapal in tribal Bastar district of Chhattisgarh.

Police said the incident took place between Mordapal and Kondagaon when the security personnel belonging to the district force were returning to headquarters after Monday’s re-polling at a polling booth.

Using landmines the Naxalites blew up a culvert targeting the vehicle in which the security personnel were traveling, killing five of them on the spot. Both the injured were hospitalised at Kondagaon.

These security personnel, who were walking down to their base camp, had got on to a taxi jeep a few kilometers before Golavand, the police said.

Security personnel, being deployed in the Naxalite areas of Bastar, have already been instructed to avoid using vehicles and to do patrolling only on foot in view of the possibility of landmine blasts, police sources said, adding that Maoists have a strong intelligence network to keep track of movement of security personnel and it becomes easy for them to target their vehicles in the remote villages of Bastar.