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Nepalese forces repulse Maoist attack on remote security base

Government forces have successfully repulsed a major strike launched by Maoists on a security base in east Nepal on Sunday night, killing at least 32 rebels, as a dawn-to-dusk shutdown called by the rebels crippled normal life in the capital Kathmandu.

At least two Royal Nepal Army soldiers, including a captain, were also confirmed killed in the overnight fighting that ensued after thousands of rebels launched a sudden attack on Rumjatar airport in Okhaldhunga district, about 500km east of Kathmandu.

"Thousands of rebels launched a sudden attack on our base at Rumjatar airport from 10pm Sunday night," defence ministry spokesman Bhupendra Prasad Poudel said in a press statement. "The joint security forces have successfully repulsed the attack, causing huge losses on the rebel side.

"They fought for seven hours and resisted the attack. Now the security forces have started a massive searching and blocking operation to hunt down the rebels." Reinforcements were sent from Kathmandu on two helicopters equipped with night vision before Sunday midnight.

About 100 members of the joint security force comprising the army and the civilian and the armed police had been stationed at the eastern remote hill base. Air transport is the only means of reaching the area, which is yet to be connected with the national road network.

This is the first such attack on a major security base by members of the underground Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist, after King Gyanendra sacked a democratically elected government headed by Sher Bahadur Deuba and assumed executive powers.

The attack came two days after top CPN-M leader Prachanda aka Puspa Kamal Dahal issued a statement inviting the king to resume peace talks and pave the way for a new constitution to end the nearly seven-year-old insurgency in the Himalayan kingdom.

The king's handpicked government headed by Lokendra Bahadur Chand, which has unveiled a plan to form a separate cell to hold negotiations with the rebels, is yet to respond to the rebel leader's offer.

Meanwhile, a dawn-to-dusk 'Kathmandu Valley bandh' called by the rebels crippled life in the three cities of Kathmandu --- Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan --- which are home to nearly 1.5 million people.

Terrorised by a series of blasts that rocked the capital on the eve of the strike on Sunday, such means of public transportation as buses and taxis stayed off the roads. Most schools remained closed and market- and office-goers could be seen walking to their destinations.

But rickshaw-pullers and street vendors said the strike had not affected their businesses. "Now that taxis and buses are off the streets, we are making good money," said Harka Bahadur, a rickshaw-puller, who was ferrying tourists to and from the Tribhuvan International Airport.

"My business is not that bad, but we are fed up with such bandhs," said Manamaya Gurung, a street vendor who was selling cigarettes, chocolates, and tobaccos near the city's King's Way intersection. "It's time parties stopped bandhs and worked towards nation building."

Before Kathmandu Valley, the rebels had scared the people into shutting down the country's southern Terai belt on Sunday, crippling the economically well-off region's industrial activities.

Modelled after Peru's Shining Path guerrillas and Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army, the Nepalese Maoists want to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republican state in this tiny South Asian nation, sandwiched between India and China.

Launched in February 1996, the violent uprising has claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 people, most of them Maoists. Moreover, it has severely hit the impoverished nation's economy and worsened the living conditions of the poor, most of whom live on less than a dollar a day.

According to figures made available recently by the Nepal Rastra Bank, the country's central bank, the economic growth rate dropped to less than 1 per cent in the fiscal year 2001-02 from nearly 5 per cent in the previous year.

So did tourist arrivals --- in a country where tourism is the mainstay of the economy. Only 19,074 tourists came to Nepal in September, the beginning of the autumn tourist season. The number was down 25 per cent over the same month last year.

The rebels have not yet attacked tourists, and the second most influential Maoist leader, Babu Ram Bhattarai, issued what he called an 'Open Letter to Tourists' a few months ago, welcoming tourists not just to visit Nepal but also the Maoists' 'base areas' in the western and eastern hills.

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