Fresh wave of violence in Nepal leaves 14 dead

AT least 14 people died in a fresh burst of violence in southern Nepal yesterday, after communist rebels lifted a two-week highway blockade that had crippled the flow of essential supplies in protest at the king’s recent power grab.

The rebels ambushed an army truck carrying soldiers on a regular patrol near the town of Patlaiya, about 160 miles south of Katmandu, killing eight of them, police said.

Another 10 soldiers suffered injuries in the attack and have been transported to hospitals, said a spokesman at the army headquarters in Katmandu.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Butwal, suspected rebels fatally shot the town’s police chief and his assistant. The rebels escaped after the attack.

Separately, insurgents killed four people in overnight attacks on villages in the south, police said. Villagers in the area have shown rare defiance of the rebels, killing 21 guerrillas in the past few days.

The rebels announced that they were lifting the blockade to ease the discomfort of the common people. However, they vowed to step up their campaign against the army.

“We are going to start a new phase of movement increasing military resistance and mass movement of people,” rebel chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, said in a statement.

A Nepalese army spokesman declined to comment.

The insurgents, who have been fighting for more than eight years to topple the monarchy and install communist rule, had blocked the country’s highways using crude bombs, mines and boulders, disrupting deliveries of basic supplies across the Himalayan kingdom and choking off major cities.

More than 10,500 people have died in the communist insurgency since 1996.