Kathmandu is hit by new violence

By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Kathmandu

The violence is the most serious since the government came to power

Life in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, has come to a halt during clashes involving protesters angered by the killing of two young men.

The bodies of the two youths were discovered this week, a month after they were kidnapped.

The killings have been blamed on the youth wing of the governing Maoist party. They deny responsibility.

Youths in the capital have been in running battles with the police and ended up being baton charged.

'Stop killing people'

One protester accused the Maoist's youth wing of "kidnapping people and killing them".

"Foreigners have to stop helping the Maoist government and have to force the Maoist government to stop killing people," he told the BBC.

The violence has been blamed on the youth wings of different parties

The shutdown, known as a bandh, resulted in a much more politically charged atmosphere in the capital.

It was most fiercely enforced on the roads that would usually be the busiest.

At one key junction, linking the hill-ringed Kathmandu valley to the outside world, there was not a single vehicle to be seen.

All schools and most businesses were closed and the streets were instead roamed by large groups of young men and boys.

The closure is in reaction to the death of two youths, Nirmal Pant and Pushkar Dangol, whose bodies were found buried just outside the Kathmandu valley.

Eyewitnesses say they were kidnapped a month ago by members of the Young Communist League (YCL), the youth wing of the Maoist party which now leads the government after ending its decade-long insurrection.

Other incidents

Its leadership has denied involvement in the killings and points out that before the incident there were political clashes between youth wings of rival parties, which saw one Maoist activist killed.

"We didn't do it," the Maoist leader in Kathmandu, known as Comrade Sagar, told the BBC.

"The other parties accuse us, but they are the ones making trouble. Even since the peace agreement, dozens of our own young members have been killed around the country. And it could be that these two guys were killed in a scuffle between the other parties."

There have however been other incidents in the past year in which the former rebel party admitted to kidnappings and killings by its members.

In recent months other parties have sought to develop youth leagues to rival that of the Maoists, making the political atmosphere more volatile and, at times, violent.

The protests come as the Maoists' central committee is engaged in a heated debate about whether it can support the current parliamentary-style system which brought it to power.