Three are killed by bomb in Nepal

By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Kathmandu

Madhesis want an autonomous state

Three members of a family - a woman and two infant children - have been killed in a bomb explosion in Nepal.

The blast happened in the south-east of the country, which has seen constant ethnic unrest for nearly two years.

This is a grim reminder that the people of Nepal's flat south-eastern farmlands are still the unhappy victims in a simmering violent conflict.

The violence comes two years after Nepal's civil war ended and after the Maoists' election victory in April.

Shops vandalised

Sila Sinjali, 24, was waiting for a bus with her three-year-old daughter and three-year-old nephew.

All were killed in the bomb blast.

Shortly afterwards two separate militant groups both said they were responsible.

Each say they are fighting for the rights of the Madhesi ethnic group, lowlanders traditionally marginalised by the Nepalese state which has been dominated by hill people.

In a sign of the lawlessness afflicting much of Nepal, local people reacted to the blast by blocking the main highway and vandalising shops.

Reports say police fired several rounds of tear gas.

The bomb went off in a district, Rautahat, which has seen some of the worst violence during two years of unrest on the part of some Madhesis - including the mass killing of 25 Maoist former rebels last year.

Many Madhesi factions have arisen. They include a party now in the Kathmandu government but also over a dozen militant factions, including some usually described as criminal.

The new government, which is led by the Maoists, recently invited the groups for talks which it hopes will start soon.

But this bomb blast, on the final day of a two-week national festival, shattered a ceasefire which most of the groups had declared throughout the feast.