The students were rescued during an operation in the mountainous Niskot village, said a statement issued by the Royal Nepalese Army headquarters in the capital, Katmandu.

Details were sketchy about the mission at the village, which is about 190 miles west of the capital, Katmandu, but army officials in the area reached by telephone said soldiers reached the village by road.

There were no casualties in the operation and there was no clash between the soldiers and guerrillas. The rebels apparently fled before the army reached the village, said one official, who did not want to be named for security reasons.

The students were rounded up and taken Friday from village schools in the remote, neighboring Tahanu and Palpa districts, a spokesman at the Royal Nepalese Army headquarters said earlier Sunday.

The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity according to army policy, said authorities had little information on the abductions.

The rebels -- who claim to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong -- have fought since 1996 to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy and replace it with a communist state.

In the past, they have taken students from their schools for a few days to indoctrinate them with their revolutionary ideology, and they have returned most of them safely.

However, they stopped the practice after local and international rights groups repeatedly appealed to the guerrillas to protect students from the violence.

The guerrillas have stepped up violence since February. 1, when King Gyanendra took control of the government claiming it was necessary in part to end the civil war, which has killed more than 11,500 people.

Also, international aid agencies said they would withdraw from a poverty-ridden district in western Nepal after the beatings of two local staff members with the German development agency GTZ.

A joint statement from aid agencies said a man and a woman were beaten, and the woman was ordered to dig her own grave before a fee was paid and the two were released.

It said projects run by groups from Germany [Images], Switzerland [Images], Britain, Finland, Japan [Images], Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Canada [Images] would be suspended in the district --one of the hardest hit by the insurgency. Residents in the area rely heavily on foreign donors.

The rebels regularly seek payments from development groups in Nepal and have shut down some projects for failing to do so.

More news from Nepal