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Eighteen Maoist rebels died in a fierce clash with the army a week ago, the Nepal army said Wednesday. A statement issued by the Royal Nepalese Army said 18 guerrillas who had fled to Salyan district in mid-western Nepal, following a 12-hour gun battle in another district, died of injuries. Their bodies were found in the Dhakadam area of Salyan, the statement said. The deaths come six days after the guerrillas attacked a security camp in Khara in Rukum district, considered the cradle of the nine-year-old insurgency that has left thousands dead. While security forces lost three men in trying...

Vigilantes May Be Nepal's Secret Weapon Against Rebels By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: April 11, 2005 APILVASTU DISTRICT, Nepal - In the fifth century B.C., this was where the Buddha came of age. Today, as this country sinks deeper into civil war, it is the epicenter of a violent tit for tat between pro-palace villagers and their enemies in a Maoist insurgency. Since mid-February, in village after village in this district, ax-wielding vigilantes have attacked those they suspect of being Maoists; the rebels have retaliated by hunting down those they consider responsible. Thousands of villagers have fled across the nearby border...

Kathmandu: A European rights group has said its team was barred from meeting two senior Maoist leaders from Nepal being held in Indian prisons. The team travelled through India in March to participate in a conference organised by the World People's Resistance Movement (Europe and South Asia), a London-based organisation. The delegation wanted to meet Nepalese Maoist leader C. Prakash Gajurel aka Gaurav, jailed in Chennai after he was arrested with a fake passport, and Mohan Baidhya alias Kiran, arrested in West Bengal where he had undergone a cataract operation. The team also tried to visit Beur prison in Bihar...

KATHMANDU (AFP) - Pakistan has offered Nepal five million dollars in trade credits and talks on a free trade agreement after the first meeting of senior economic officials of the two countries in a decade, Nepal's finance ministry said. Nepalese Finance Minister Madhukar Shumsher Rana and Pakistan's Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar concluded two days of talks by signing an agreement to boost trade and investment in the fields of health, textiles, pharmaceuticals, tourism and civil aviation. The economic package by Pakistan comes after India cut military aid to the Hindu kingdom following a February 1...

KATHMANDU (AFP) - Pakistan is ready to provide arms and counter-insurgency training to help Nepal face down an increasingly bloody Maoist revolt, Islamabad's outgoing ambassador here Zamir Akram said in an interview. "We are ready to share our experience and, hopefully, this will help Nepal," Akram said in the interview with the Rising Nepal published on Friday. "So, we are ready to help in whatever way we can. Pakistan is also facing terrorist threats on our western border. We have developed some kind of expertise, especially in the use of high-tech equipment by the terrorists," he told the state-run English...

We did it... We protested churchill. There was a collection of pro-Churchill moonbats that showed up, and we protested them as well.

TROUBLE SPEAK Ward Churchill copied 'original' art piece Takes a swing at TV reporter who confronted him -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 26, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Professor Ward Churchill Adding to a growing list of allegations, controversial University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill appears to have violated copyright law by claiming a reknowned artist's work as his own. Churchill, whose integrity has been challenged since news broke earlier last month of his paper blaming victims of 9-11 for the attacks, made an Indian-theme serigraph in 1981 called "Winter Attack" and printed 150 copies. But one of the buyers,...

For Pritam, the massacre was also sweet revenge. Two years ago, he was abducted by Maoists along with five villagers, shot and dumped in the paddy fields. But Pritam survived and vowed revenge. Pritam — a Madese, a term for people of Indian origin settled in the Terai — began organising farmers and, with the money collected from them, bought sophisticated weapons. “The ferocity of Maoist attacks, especially targeting the Madese people, provoked anger and I had to use this to defend the people here,” he said. On February 19, Tiger’s men heard that over 300 rebels had gathered in...

Though by no means unexpected, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government’s dismissal completes the two-and-a-half-year strangulation of Nepal’s multi-party democracy. King Gyanendra has plotted the royal takeover meticulously, ever since he sacked Deuba’s caretaker ministry in October 2002 for, it was said, failing to hold a snap-poll within six months of parliament’s dissolution. Deuba’s successor and pro-monarchist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party leader Lokendra Bahadur Chand’s government fared no better and was replaced by another headed by RPP leader Surya Bahadur Thapa. When he too failed to deliver what the king wanted, he was left with little option but to reinstate Deuba in...

Nepal's king has today sacked his government and declared a state of emergency. Gyanendra, who assumed the throne in 2001 when his brother, the former king, was killed in a massacre, denied that the move was a coup. However, soldiers surround the prime minister's house as armoured cars patrol the country's capital, Kathmandu. In an announcement on state-run television, the king accused political parties of plunging the Himalayan kingdom into crisis by failing to hold elections or end the civil war with Maoist rebels. "I have decided to dissolve the government because it has failed to make necessary arrangements to...

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nawa Raj Joshi was a teacher for more than 30 years in a small village in western Nepal, until one day Maoist rebels decided they didn't like his politics. "They beat me with rifle butts and kicked me, and forced me to flee," he said. "But my wife and two sons were not allowed to leave." A few years later, the rebels came back, this time for his son. "They asked him to accompany them, and he couldn't say no. We think they are trying to force him to join them." Joshi's story is an every-day one...

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- When the Organization of American States asked its press freedom expert, Santiago Canton, to report on the state of the independent press in Venezuela, they must have known it was a sensitive mission. President Hugo Chavez's radical populist government does not take kindly to criticism nor does it appreciate outside scrutiny of its internal affairs. It's doubtful, though, that anyone at the OAS expected Canton to fall victim himself to the kind of tactics the Venezuelan press faces every day. Just moments after beginning the final press conference of his four-day visit to ...

Copyright 2004 Associated Press Associated Press Worldstream DISTRIBUTION: Asia; England; Middle East Police: Suspected communist rebels blow up police truck, 13 feared dead. LUCKNOW, India A land mine planted by suspected communist rebels blew up a police truck in northern India on Saturday and 13 policemen were feared killed, a police officer said. The attack took place near Naughar, a village 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, said Shailaja Kant Mishra, the inspector-general of police. Mishra said the exact casualties were not immediately known, but that "13 policemen were feared dead." The policemen...

PATNA, India, Aug 12 (Reuters) - A raid on an Indian police post by Nepal's Maoist rebels and arrests of their comrades on Indian soil could be indications that a bloody revolt in that country could be spilling over. A group of armed men, including some Nepalis, overran the post and took away weapons last month in thick forests in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, which shares a long border with Nepal, the head of a special Indian police unit said. The attack on the police post came shortly after 12 Maoists, including some middle-level operatives, were arrested from...

50 children and 12 teachers were abducted from their school. Imagine how frightened they are. I'd like to start a prayer group to pray for their safe, quick release. I'll pray every 3 hours today and tomorrow starting at noon Pacific Standard Time, then 3PM, 6PM and 9PM PST. This is an invitation to join me in a group prayer for their safe return home. Maoist Rebels Abduct 50 School Children in Nepal KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Maoist guerrillas abducted at least 50 students and a dozen teachers from a school near the Nepali capital to try to force them to...

KATHMANDU: Fifteen Maoist rebels were killed in two gun battles on Thursday in Nepal amid a spurt in violence after a coalition government took form, a security official said. The official said the rebels who died in clashes in the western Gorkha and Dailekh districts included a Maoist local commander named Bikram Ghale. The Maoists, who are fighting to overthrow the monarchy, have stepped up attacks since Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba last week sealed a deal to form Nepal’s most broadly backed government in two years. The rebels on Friday killed the mayor of Pokhara, one of the kingdom’s...

Cheerleaders for TerrorismBy Erick StakelbeckFrontPageMagazine.com | June 17, 2003 Two groups whom Islamic terrorists can count on for sympathy and support are radical lawyers and their counterparts in American law schools. Lynne Stewart is a hero of the National Lawyers Guild and a sought-after campus lecturer. While out on bail under indictment for colluding with a terrorist leader, she has been a sought-after speaker for law school audiences who relish her attacks on Attorney General John Ashcroft as a modern-day fascist and on her country for its imperialist and racist policies. Stewart made national headlines in April 2002 when she...

KATHMANDU : Maoist rebels abducted around 1,500 youths from three villages in a remote corner of south-western Nepal , a local village official said on Wednesday. The kidnappings late yesterday were the latest in a wave of abductions by the rebels, who security officials say take students, teachers and others to draft them into their ranks and "re-educate" them at Maoist camps. "The Maoists kidnapped 1,500 youths and students including teenage girls from Tribhuvan Basti, Kalipa and Parasa villages in Kanchanpur district," Rajendra Singh Rawal, an elected council official, said. "The rebels took these 1,500 people in 27 tractor-trailers to...

DHAKA: Nepal will not bow to Maoist rebels fighting to establish a ``totalitarian system’’ in the Himalayan kingdom, Nepal’s prime minister told his Bangladeshi counterpart on Thursday. Surya Bahadur Thapa accused the guerrillas of walking out of peace talks in August and said they have again resorted to terrorism, Bangladesh’s top Foreign Ministry bureaucrat Shamser Mobin Chowdhury told reporters. Thapa, in talks with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, vowed to stop the rebels, whose only objective is to establish a one-party totalitarian system in Nepal,’’ Chowdhury said. More than 8,200 people have been killed since the insurgency began in 1996,...

Maoist rebels fighting to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy set off a bomb under a truck on Wednesday, killing five soldiers and five policemen, officials said. The blast, the second major attack on security forces this week, took place in Kapilvastu, 300 km (185 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, they said. "Troops were rushed to the site of the blast and a search (for the bombers) is under way," an interior ministry official said. Violence in the poor Himalayan kingdom has surged since the rebels abandoned a truce in August and resumed attacks on security forces. Eleven policemen were killed...

With the government struggling to hold on as once-dismissed Maoist bandits storm the countryside, Nick Meo in Nepal finds the ordinary people caught in the power struggle – in the capital they party while they can, in the rural areas they pay off the communists to stay alive When the Maoists came to tax Dil’s grandmother last month the old woman didn’t have any money to pay them off. Instead, they helped themselves to rice from her harvest and a couple of chickens for the guerrilla pot. “You have to pay them with something, otherwise they will kill you,” he...

At least 25 people, including 11 policemen and 13 Maoist rebels, were killed in an escalation of violence in Nepal, officials said on Sunday. Violence in impoverished Nepal has surged since the rebels, who seek to replace the monarchy with communist rule, walked out of peace talks and broke a truce in August, ending seven months of calm. Rebels detonated a landmine under a police patrol truck on Sunday, killing at least 11 policemen and wounding four others travelling in it, police said. Sunday's attack took place in the district of Mahottari, about 400 km (250 miles) east of Kathmandu,...

Indian police say that Nepalese rebels are entering India to take shelter and seek medical treatment. A recent police report noted 128 cases of injured rebels being treated at hospitals in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state, the AP news agency says. Three suspected rebels were arrested on Monday while trying to take a comrade to hospital in Uttar Pradesh's capital, Lucknow, police said. Nepal's Maoists have been fighting for a communist republic since 1996. Police raids Uttar Pradesh and Nepal share a porous 780-kilometre (485 mile) border, which is patrolled by both countries. "The actual number [of rebels entering...

Maoist rebels fighting to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy killed six policeman and wounded 11 in the biggest attack on security forces in the Himalayan kingdom in a month, officials said on Wednesday. The attack took place on Tuesday night in Kailali district, 600 km (375 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, district administrator Sibendra Purush Dhakal told Reuters by telephone. The area is a Maoist stronghold. The rebels ambushed the patrol, throwing crude bombs and opening fire with rifles, as the policemen were going through a forest. "There was a fierce battle and many Maoists could have also been killed,"...

The international police agency, Interpol, has issued arrest warrants for 11 top Nepalese rebels. They include the Maoist rebel leader, Prachanda, his second-in-command, Baburam Bhattarai, and spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara. More than 8,000 people have died in the Maoists' eight-year insurrection aimed at replacing the Himalayan kingdom's monarchy with a communist republic. The Interpol move comes after peace talks collapsed in Nepal in August. This is the second time Interpol has sought the arrests of top rebels. Security officials in Nepal say that the Interpol arrest warrants - known as Red Notices - will help police forces in the...

Maoist guerrillas in Chhattisgarh have threatened to chop off the hands of people who vote in assembly elections on December 1. Outlawed Maoist groups operating in six districts of Chhattisgarh have issued the warning, police officials say. Tribal villagers in Maoist-dominated areas have decided to keep away from the polls due to the threat. While the rest of Chhattisgarh is witnessing hectic campaigning ahead of the polls, an uneasy calm is prevailing in villages in these seven constituencies. One can see neither flags nor posters and banners of political parties in the interior villages of districts affected by Maoist violence....

The leader of Nepal’s Maoist rebels on Friday blamed the United States for the collapse of peace talks three months ago between the rebels and the government of this Himalayan nation. The rebel leader, Prachanda, said in a statement that an “American conspiracy” led to the collapse in August of peace talks aimed at ending seven years of violence. The rebels have since resumed attacks on government and civilian targets. “It was the American Imperialists who had a hand in the conspiracy to derail the peace talks,” said the elusive rebel leader, whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal. He...

The United States has condemned the Maoist rebels in Nepal following the killing of a senior Nepalese army officer. Brigadier General Sagar Bahadur Pandey, his wife and three soldiers were killed on Saturday when the rebels ambushed their vehicle. Brigadier Pandey was the most senior military officer to be killed in the eight-year-long insurgency. In a statement, the American Embassy in Kathmandu urged the Maoists to restore the ceasefire they agreed with the government and resume peace talks. The Maoists, who want to turn Nepal into a communist republic, broke a ceasefire for the second time in August, since when...

KATHMANDU - Anyone going through literature put out by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) will understand that the ultimate aim of the "People's War", launched in early 1996, is to convert the Himalayan kingdom into a state run by the believers of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Their Internet web site places Prachanda, their supremo who goes with one name, on a par with Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. And the Nepali expression of the "Prachanda Path" is made to appear comparable to the Shining Path movement in Peru. Baburam Bhattarai, one of the leader's right-hand men, used to cite the...

In the 60's Nepal was a hashish-filled Shangri-La for hippies. In the 80's its hills swarmed with trekkers catching the evening sun as it hit Annapurna. Now a more sinister show is playing in the villages and in the capital, Katmandu. For seven years, Maoist rebels have been waging a "people's war" that has turned this once-peaceful nation of 25 million, Lord Buddha's birthplace, into a killing field with thousands dead. In language that frighteningly invokes Pol Pot's Cambodia, they've vowed to kill millions more and "hoist the hammer and sickle atop Mount Everest." In August, after a seven-month cease-fire...

Ten Nepalese security personnel were killed and eight others seriously injured when their jeep hit a landmine planted by suspected Maoist rebels, police said. The joint army-police patrol was searching for rebels in the Parsa district, 225 kilometers (140 miles) south of Kathmandu, when their vehicle hit the explosives in the Belawa area. "Among the injured soldiers, a few are in critical condition and were airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment," a police source said Sunday, upgrading an earlier toll. The Maoists have been fighting since 1996 to overthrow the monarchy in an insurgency that has claimed more than 8,900 lives,...

<p>The Aug. 27 failure of peace talks between Maoist rebels and the royal government in Katmandu has led to a spiral of violence for the impoverished people of Nepal.</p> <p>Since then, the Royal Nepalese Army and the Maoist People's Liberation Army, Nepal, (PLAN) have resumed their "fight to the finish," recently claiming the lives of nearly 1,100 soldiers, policemen, guerrillas and civilians, and raising the death toll to more than 9,100 since the start of the insurgency in 1996.</p>

Nine people have been killed in an attack by Maoist rebels in western Nepal, according to a security official. The official said more than 50 rebels attacked a police post at Susuwa, 200 kilometres (124 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu. Six policemen, one soldier, and two civilians were killed in the ensuing gun battle, he added. It is not clear whether there were any casualties on the rebel side. Correspondents say this is the third such incident in three days in western Nepal. The Maoists want to replace the constitutional monarchy in Nepal with a republic, and have stepped...

A bold attempt by Maoist rebels to assassinate an Indian chief minister earlier this month highlights the enduring - and in some cases growing - presence of violent leftist insurgencies in India. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, escaped with minor injuries Oct. 1 when rebels of the People's War Group detonated nine explosives athis passing motorcade. "It was a judicious move to eliminate a person who has been perpetuating state-sponsored violence," the Maoist group said in a statement. Mr. Naidu, an economic reformer, has taken a hard line against leftist groups. The threat was...

Thirteen persons, including two policemen were killed, a minister's house and a Hydropower project attacked in heightened Maoist violence in Nepal. According to the police, the rebels killed three civilians in Kapilvastu district, three in Banke district, one each in Parsa and Bardia districts and a policeman in Nawalparasi district. "A group of Maoist rebels travelling on bicycles forced all the family members out of the house and blasted the minister's house using cooker bomb", police said. In Rupendahi district, Maoists bombed and destroyed the ancestral house of Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Sarvendranath Shukla. Despite a Maoist announcement...

During the last year, Communist terrorist organisations have registered an unusual increase of 36 per cent in their activities. The precision with which mines were blasted with the intention to take Chandrababu Naidu’s life speaks a lot about the preparedness of the People’s War Group (PWG). Since the 1917 October revolution, violence has been an inseparable part of the Communist ‘practical party line’. From Stalin and Mao to EMS and Jyoti Basu, violence has always been the hallmark of Communist parties’ growth even as banners inscribed with the words ‘Peace, Harmony, People’s power, Condemn the Bourgeois, Long Live the Revolution’...

At least 37 people have been killed when about 1,000 Maoist rebels tried to storm a police training centre in western Nepal two days after ending a truce with the government, police say. The clash began late on Sunday when the rebels fighting to topple the constitutional monarchy began firing from higher ground at the roadside camp in Bhaluwang, 400 km (250 miles) west of Kathmandu. "The rebels had snapped telephone cables, set up roadblocks by felling trees or blowing up highway bridges to prevent reinforcements from coming," a witness, Krishna Adhikary, told Reuters. The clash came after 37 Maoists...

In Nepal, authorities say more than 300 Maoist rebels and 70 security personnel have been killed since the end of a cease-fire five weeks ago. Military spokesman Deepka Gurung says hundreds of rebels have been killed in clashes with the army since the end of August, when a seven-month truce between the government and Maoist guerrillas collapsed. He says scores of army and police personnel also have been killed or wounded in fighting that usually takes place in remote, rural areas where Maoists have their strongholds. Authorities reported at least three clashes this week involving attacks by rebels on police...

The Indian army has taken action against Communist rebels who it believes have been training Nepalese Maoist guerillas in two eastern Indian states, a newspaper reported yesterday. "The defence ministry has evidence that Nepalese Maoists are receiving arms training in India's Bihar and Jharkhand states and this information has been passed on to the home ministry," The Tribune newspaper quoted India's Defence Minister George Fernandes as saying. Action has been initiated on this front, Fernandes said in a speech at a defence seminar in the northern city of Chandigarh. The newspaper report didn't specify what sort of action the army...

Fifteen people including 12 rebels were killed on Saturday and suspected Maoists bombed five government utilities despite the guerrillas' plans for a nine day truce from October 2, officials said. Twelve Maoists were killed in a gunbattle with security forces at Chhita Pokhara in the Khotang district, 340 kilometres east of Kathmandu, a police officer said. Elsewhere in eastern Nepal, the Maoists killed two policemen, Purna Giri and Radha Krishna Rai, and a woman selling beetle nuts, Kala Chaudhary, in the Jaljale-Gaighat area, an official said. "A group of seven Maoists descended from a public bus when police were checking...

Nepal's Maoist rebels are now the masters of the general strike as a political weapon. The three-day strike that began on Thursday is their boldest move since the breakdown of peace talks with the government late last month. It is an attempt to show that they have popular support for their demands to change the constitution and, perhaps, abolish Nepal's monarchy. The first thing that seems different during a general strike, or bandh as they are called here, is the air over Kathmandu city - it's clean. On a normal working day, hundreds of thousands of vehicles belching diesel...

Maoists attacked a royal property and set ablaze Premier Surya Bahadur Thapa's farm house in Nepal as normal life came to a standstill in the capital on the first day of the rebel-sponsored general strike. The rebels set ablaze the farmhouse at Birtababiya village of Morang district on Wednesday and looted property worth Rs 10 lakh. They also destroyed a house at the royal garden at Thansing village in Nuwakot, Radio Nepal said. However, no one was injured in these attacks. Maoists also set ablaze a school building in Dhading district, neighbouring Kathmandu on Wednesday night. Life was paralysed and...

As Maoist rebels spread fear and violence across Nepal, the establishment in the once booming capital watches its world fall apart On the empty balcony above the hushed courtyard outside his deserted restaurant in Kathmandu, Gautam Rana sets down a heavy scrapbook on a cocktail table and slides open its leather fastener. Inside, newspaper clippings written by society columnists, restaurant critics and travel writers from across the world document how, six years ago, Rana opened the most chic and elegant collection of boutiques, bars and bistros Asia had ever seen, in the restored outbuildings of his family's former palace. There...

KATHMANDU - It has been more than two weeks since the end of the ceasefire between the government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). When the rebels declared, on August 27, that there remained no justification for the seven-month-long truce, all had not seemed lost. Since they had not explicitly stated that the ceasefire had ended, there still seemed a hint that it was a pressure ploy to force concessions out of the government. For its part, the government once again urged the Maoists to return to the negotiating table, even while it declared that it was ready to...

There was no let up in Maoist violence in Nepal as rebels set-off a series of bomb blasts targeting Government offices and shot dead two police personnel in the capital today. Maoists exploded at least three bombs in Government buildings housing the Central Fishery Development office and Department of Standards, Weights and Measure at Balaju on the outskirts of Kathmandu at 8.45 am. The blasts caused extensive damage to the offices, according to Radio Nepal. However, no one was injured. Rebels attacked police personnel deployed at the popular tourist centre of Pokhara in Western Nepal this morning, killing one policeman....

"The bullet may go in our chest, but we have to defeat the government," Comrade Sharpshooter told his attentive young audience of Maoist soldiers in the remote hills of Surkhet district in Nepal. The audience and the performers were mostly in their teens. Battalion Commissar New Model, at 30, was the oldest man present. "In communist countries there have been weaknesses," he acknowledged. "We don't want to repeat that weakness. We are making a new system and we have confidence. We have worldwide support from the poor and oppressed." Dr Baburam Bhattarai: 'By whatever means necessary' After a six-month ceasefire,...

Maoists rebels on Tuesday raided a town in central Nepal and shot dead three officers at a police station and two boys watching a soccer game at a nearby school, police said on Wednesday. At least six police officers were missing after the attack. They could be hiding in nearby forests or have been captured by the rebels, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. The attack occurred at Khaireni, about 120 km west of Kathmandu. The officer declined to provide other details of the attack. Maoist rebels have intensified attacks after withdrawing from ceasefire and pulling out of...

Maoists have accused the United States and Nepal's army of sabotaging peace talks, even as the rebels are suspected to be behind blasts that ripped through Kathmandu Valley. Baburam Bhattarai, deputy leader of the outlawed Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that is suspected to be behind Monday's attacks in three districts, said in an article published in a leading Nepalese daily Tuesday that foreign forces influenced "the outcome of the peace talks". Bhattarai said while a large part of the international community had tried to see the dialogues succeed, "some forces could not conceal their sabotaging role from the beginning...

As many as 100 Maoist rebels could have been killed in a huge battle with security forces in western Nepal, army sources said on Monday. The sources, quoting witnesses to Sunday's clash near the village of Sini in Achham district, said the bodies of 35 insurgents had been carried away, while altogether as many as 100 rebels could have been killed in the heavy fighting. There was no way of independently verifying the death toll from the clash which took place in a remote part of the Himalayan kingdom. "We are waiting for a detailed report on the incident," an...

Maoist rebels in Nepal have pulled out of talks with the government after a seven-month truce aimed at ending seven years of war. They say the peace process is over. BBC News Online looks at what went wrong. Why has the ceasefire broken down? Despite holding several rounds of talks over the last few months, the two sides could not agree on the central issue - the role of Nepal's constitutional monarchy. The Maoists want a special committee to be set up to draft a new constitution for the country, which would offer the option of abolishing the monarchy. But...