Bhubaneswar, Sept. 16: A 500-strong mob stormed an Orissa police station and shot dead a trainee constable as fresh violence flared in Kandhamal last night hours after the state’s home secretary claimed the situation was “under control” in the riot-ravaged district.

State police chief Gopal Chandra Nanda confirmed the attack and the death of sepoy Bibhudendra Biswal, which took the toll to 27 in weeks of communal violence since the recent murder of a Hindu leader and four associates.

Police sources said the mob, armed with country-made guns, crude bombs and sticks, set fire to Gochapada police station, around 240km from capital Bhubaneswar.

District police chief S. Praveen Kumar said 500 men descended on the police station around midnight, ransacked it and fired at the staff. Biswal, hit in the thigh and head, died on the spot.

On their way back, the attackers also set fire to a police outpost in Balandapada, about 14km away.

This was the first time police stations had been attacked in Kandhamal though a mob had stormed one in Koraput last month as the communal violence, which has forced thousands of Christians to flee their homes, spread to another district.

The violence has also spread to Karnataka in the south where churches have been damaged in the past three days by Hindu mobs complaining against forced conversions.

Sources said personnel at Gochapada police station and some 24 trainee sepoys of the Rourkela-based Special Security Battalion tried to fight back but were overpowered by the attackers, who burnt to ashes eight police vehicles, furniture and all documents.

Some reports said the policemen, who were asleep, were caught unawares and ran for cover to the nearby forests. But SP Kumar, who later reached the spot, denied the reports.

Some sources said the attack was in response to the arrest of a few persons earlier for rioting and arson.

Others said it was a “retaliatory action” by fundamentalist groups following the police firing in Kurtamgarh on Saturday in which four persons were killed.