Bhubaneswar, May 1: Maoists killed an alleged police informer at Tamaguda village of Malkangiri today even as security forces engaged the rebels in a gunfight at Kurub forest in Kalimela block of the district.

There were no reports of casualties in the encounter.

Sources said the rebels called Deba Madkami, a resident of Tamaguda, out of his house early this morning. Later, his body was found on the village outskirts with the throat slit.

The Maoists, said sources, had warned Madkami some time ago against passing on information about them to the police.

The incident comes two days after the rebels gunned down two villagers in Malkangiri suspecting them to be police informers.

A group of around 20 Maoists had shot dead Bisu Kirsani, a resident of Sudhagonda village, and Rama Madkami, who belonged to Puniamunda village, on April 28.

According to police sources, the gun battle between the Maoists and security forces took place inside the Kurub forest when the District Voluntary Force and the district police were conducting a joint combing operation in the area.

On April 28, the security forces had destroyed a Maoist camp in Ambadala forest on the Rayagada-Kandhamal border.

Sources said the operation against the rebels by the security forces had begun late on Thursday night.

When the rebels saw the security forces, they started firing at them and the forces retaliated.

Though there were no reports of casualties in the operation, the joint team of security forces found a huge cache of arms and ammunition and seized it.

The same day, another exchange of fire took place between Maoists and a joint team of the CRPF and District Voluntary Force inside the Jajasapanga forest at Phiringia in Kandhamal district.

The focus of the police, however, remains on Malkangiri, which has been a rebel bastion for several years now.

Vigil on the district's border with Chhattisgarh has been stepped up in the wake of the Maoist attack on a CRPF team in the neighbouring state recently.

The ambush had resulted in the death of 25 CRPF jawans.

Combing operation has also been stepped up in the neighbouring Koraput district that also shares a border with Chhattisgarh apart from Andhra Pradesh.

Sources said that focus of the state's anti-Maoist operation would be on these districts for some time now with the security forces continuing to hunt for top rebel commander Ramakrishna, who had managed to escape with injuries from an encounter that took place on the Malkangiri-Chhattisgarh border in November last year.

Twenty-four Maoist rebels were killed in this encounter.