Nepali police fire on protesters

KATHMANDU - Nepali police opened fire and used teargas on Saturday to confront over 100,000 anti-monarchy protesters who defied a curfew and marched towards King Gyanendra's palace in the centre of the capital.  

The police opened fire in at least two places and fired teargas repeatedly to push back protesters just a km from the palace, witnesses said. 

Political parties said about 150 people were wounded. About 100 were brought to one hospital alone, doctors said.  

"Most of them have been hurt by teargas or in a stampede as they fled," said Dr. Rajesh Dhoj Joshi at the Kathmandu Model Hospital. "But some have bullet wounds."  

Marchers, waving branches and red communist flags, broke into the city as a seven-party alliance rejected overtures by the king to form a government. Previously, in over two weeks of protests, the protesters have been held at the outskirts.  

"The proclamation has no meaning," said former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala of the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the alliance, referring to Gyanendra's broadcast to the nation on Friday in which the monarch offered to hand over executive power.  

The king appeared to rule out any change of the constitution to curb his powers. Political parties have demanded elections for a constituent assembly, which would draft a new constitution.  

"The royal proclamation is a sham," protesters shouted as they threw tree branches, scrap and rocks across roads to block vehicles.

Mobile phone services in the capital were cut soon after the marchers entered city limits, apparently to prevent protest organisers from communicating.  

Truckloads of armed police ringed the city centre as the marchers, young and old, were dispersed, only to try to regroup. But rainfall in the afternoon saw the marchers head for cover. 

Troops with automatic weapons and backed by armoured cars took up position around the palace as helicopters flew overhead.  

"It started very peacefully and we just joined the back of a very long procession," said Ian Chalmers, a tourist from Hertfordshire in England. "Suddenly teargas shells rained in."  

He said he had not heard gunshots in the commotion but later saw two people slumped on the street, either wounded or overcome by gas.  

One man was hit on the chest with a teargas shell and was severely wounded, Joshi, the doctor said.  

"We thought he was dead. But after 15 minutes, he began to show signs of life."  

Around Joshi scores of people were being treated in the corridors of the crowded hospital.  

Ambulances came in regularly carrying the wounded, who were quickly examined before being taken in for treatment or left lying on mattresses on the floor to be tended to later.  

Gyanendra said on Friday he was restoring political power to the people and asked the seven-party alliance spearheading the pro-democracy campaign to name a new prime minister.  

The king sacked the government and took full powers in February 2005, vowing to crush a decade-old Maoist revolt in which more than 13,000 people have died.  

In a statement on Sunday the Maoist rebels, who are loosely allied with the alliance, called Gyanendra's statement "a show of feudal arrogance and an insult to the great human sea that has taken to the streets".  

- REUTERS