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Maoist rebels early Monday morning launched major attacks against police targets at two places in the Himalayan kingdom, killing 38 people and injuring 39.
According to a police spokesperson, the rebels launched the attacks in the mid-western Rukum district and north-central Dolakha district, killing 30 police personnel in Rukum and five in Dolakha.
The Rukumkot police post, having a strength of 76 personnel, was taken over by the rebels after an almost four-long encounter, in which 28 policemen were injured. Besides, the Maoists took two dozen police personnel captive and their whereabouts are not known, the spokesperson said.
At Mainapokhari village in Dolakha district, 150 km east of Kathmandu, five police personnel and three rebels died in an almost two-hour-long exchange of firing. Eleven policemen were injured in the attack.
Deputy prime minister and home minister Ram Chandra Poudel and inspector general of police Pradip Shumshere Jung Bahadur Rana flew to Rukum to access the situation.
The Rukum attack is the biggest against a police target by the Maoists since they launched their people's war in February, 1996 demanding establishment of a republican state as against the present constitutional monarchy in the Hindu kingdom. The armed rebellion has claimed more than 1,650 lives.
Suspected Maoists also set off two bombs in the capital -- at the residences of former IGP Achyut Krishna Kharel and a former parliamentarian belonging to the ruling Nepali Congress.
UNI
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