At least 13 people were killed and 100 or more feared missing after a footbridge collapsed over a river in western Nepal today, police said.

Up to 100 people were feared missing after a footbridge collapsed in western Nepal today.

NEPALESE police were last night struggling to enforce a curfew imposed to keep persistent thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators off the streets as the Himalayan country’s political crisis deepened.

MORE than 1,000 Maoists launched a violent assault on a district headquarters in Nepal’s northwestern mountains, as angry traders rallied on the streets of Kathmandu to protest a crippling rebel blockade of the capital, now also hit by a general strike.