Violence returns to Nepal, 11 injured ???????

Eleven people including six policemen were hurt in separate incidents in Nepal involving the Maoists just days after the former rebels joined the political mainstream by entering parliament, officials said on Sunday. The policemen were wounded when 200 Maoists, carrying batons and stones, attacked a police post on Saturday, at Patabhar, 350 km southwest of Kathmandu.

"Three of the wounded policemen have been rushed to a nearby hospital with head injuries," district official Shiva Nepal said. "The Maoists ransacked the post, threw out belongings and utensils of the policemen before leaving the area," he added. Maoist leaders were not immediately available for comment.

Nearly 2,000 police posts, closed during the 10-year anti-monarchy Maoist revolt, are being reopened across Nepal after rebels and the government signed a peace deal in November.

On Sunday, authorities imposed a curfew to prevent further clashes in the southeastern town of Lahan, where a 16-year-old boy, Ramesh Kumar Mahato, was killed when a former rebel shot at a crowd of protesters two days ago, another official said. The Maoists claim the dead boy belonged to their party and his family gave them permission to take his body away.

"We have imposed the curfew to avoid further clashes after a crowd of locals attacked a Maoist office in the town wounding five former rebels," Chiranjibi Adhikary, an official, said. The protesters say Nepal's interim constitution offers very little for the development of people living in the country's impoverished southern plains.

The injured Maoists are undergoing treatment in a local hospital, the official added. A second district also lay paralyzed by a strike call no one knew given by whom while Kathmandu valley and other major cities reeled under an indefinite transport strike enforced from Sunday.

Long-distance buses connecting Kathmandu with outer districts and trucks from India to Nepal ground to a halt as bus owners united under the National Federation of Nepal Transport Entrepreneurs clamped down an indefinite chakka jam nationwide, demanding security and compensation from the government.

The violence comes after the Maoists formally abandoned their decade-old anti-monarchy revolt when their leaders joined an interim parliament last week.