Kathmandu, Dec 23: Armed Maoist rebels kidnapped 45 boys at a school in southwestern Nepal that stayed open amid a strike called by supporters of the guerrillas, a newspaper reported today. The Nepali-language Sandhyakalin ("dusk") said three gun-wielding Maoists barged into the secondary boys school on Saturday in the remote town of Lekgaon in the Surkhet district and took 45 students away. It said there has since been no sign of the children.
Home ministry spokesman Gopendra Bahadur Pandey said he had received no news of the incident.
The school has since shut down fearing another Maoist attack, the newspaper said. It said police learned of the kidnapping from students who had gone searching for the missing boys, who were in their early teens.
Maoist students had called a strike from December 9 to press for lower tuition and other demands, but the shutdown was only supposed to affect the Kathmandu valley.
The newspaper said parents of the missing children hoped the boys would be released after the Maoist students today ended their strike.
The Maoists have been fighting since 1996 to topple the constitutional monarchy, in an insurgency that has claimed more than 7,300 lives. Bureau Report