Maoists bomb Govt buildings, take 20 policemen hostage

NEPAL: Communist rebels bombed government buildings, took a local official and 20 policemen hostage and freed jailed comrades during a brazen overnight raid on a town in southern Nepal, police said Thursday.

The rebels attacked army and police bases, and bombed a half-dozen government buildings during the attack at Malangawa, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Katmandu, police official Rajan Limbu said.

They took the area's chief administrative official hostage along with at least 20 policemen while freeing inmates from the town's jail, including detained rebels, Rajan said.

Fighting continued until Thursday morning when reinforcement troops reached the area.

The attack came just hours before a nationwide general strike called by Nepal's seven major political parties in their efforts to roll back King Gyanendra's direct rule over the Himalayan nation.

The rebels have said they support the move, and pledged to suspend all violence in the capital Katmandu during the four-day strike.

Meanwhile, an army helicopter sent to the area crashlanded and three unidentified bodies were lying near the aircraft, an army officer said without elaborating.

"The body of a Maoist in combat dress is lying in front of my house," Yadav Subedi, a Malangwa resident, told Reuters by phone.

Some policemen and senior bureaucrats were missing after the fighting, Subedi and the local journalist said.

Nepal's seven main political parties have called for the strike and have vowed to defy a government ban on protests to launch what they expect to be a decisive campaign for democracy.

Although the guerrillas, who are fighting to establish a communist state, are supporting the political groups as part of a pact against the king, they are not participating in the protests and the rallies are expected to be largely peaceful.

Roads across the country were deserted on Thursday as the strike began. Businesses and schools were shut despite the government urging people not to support the strike call.

The king's government detained activists and politicians on the eve of the strike in a bid to scuttle it and imposed a night curfew in the capital region saying the Maoists could infiltrate the protests and spark violence.

"About 300 people have been arrested so far," Subhash Nemwang, a senior leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML), the country's second largest party, told Reuters.

"We will defy the ban on protests and take out rallies today from different places in the capital," he said.

The United States condemned the detention of politicians and called for their release.

"Dialogue between Nepal's legitimate political forces - the king and opposition political parties - is the only effective way to return Nepal to democracy and address its Maoist insurgency," the U.S. embassy in Kathmandu said in a statement.

"Such a dialogue, however, is not possible in a climate in which the freedoms of speech and assembly are suppressed," it said and urged political groups to ensure their pro-democracy campaigns were peaceful.

Kathmandu, Thursday AP, Reuters