Hundreds Dead In Nepal Battle

Fighting in western Nepal for control of a Maoist stronghold raged on Thursday as state radio reported that as many as 350 rebels and security forces were believed to have been killed.

At least 104 soldiers and police died in fighting in the remote village of Gam, where a gunbattle broke out late Tuesday after guerrillas surrounded a joint army-police base, Radio Nepal said. Some 250 Maoist rebels were also believed to have been killed, it said.

Gam, a Himalayan expanse where the rebels' movement to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy began, was a Maoist stronghold for six years but has been under army control for two months.

The guerrillas regained control of the village in Tuesday night's attack, a senior official of the Royal Nepalese Army told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Radio Nepal said army reinforcements reached the area Thursday morning and that a battle to regain the territory followed.

Reports by the military, including the casualty figures, can't be confirmed as journalists and human rights groups have no access to the war zone.

As the fighting raged, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and U.S. President George W. Bush met this week in Washington to discuss U.S. aid for Nepal. The Bush administration recently asked Congress for $20 million in non-combat assistance for Nepal.

In other fighting Wednesday, the army took back a police camp the guerrillas had seized for several hours in the town of Chainpur, about 240 miles east of Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, the army officer said.

Four police officers were killed and soldiers recovered the bodies of 14 rebels — including two women — in Chainpur. In a separate battle in the far western Jumla district, soldiers killed four Maoist rebels, the Defense Ministry said.

The Maoist counterattacks were a response to the air and land assault on a suspected guerrilla training camp in the Rolpa district, 180 miles west of Katmandu. It was the biggest military operation in six years of fighting in the traditionally peaceful Himalayan kingdom.

According to the army more than 500 people have been killed since Thursday.

Militarily and symbolically, Tuesday's campaign in Gam, located at a height of about 6,560 feet, was a major achievement for the Maoists.

At least 40 soldiers and 60 police officers were at the base when the rebels launched their surprise attack, killing them all, said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Until the government captured Gam in a fierce offensive this year, the rebels administered a local government that included taxes and a justice system in the remote western village.

The Nepal government imposed a state of emergency in November that allowed the army for the first time to join police in fighting the rebels, who follow the doctrines of Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong. Nepal's army has participated in international peacekeeping operations but had never fought in an internal conflict until November.