Scores wounded as Nepal police fire on protesters

Nepali police opened fire and used teargas yesterday to confront more than 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 500 metres from the palace, witnesses said. Political parties said about 150 people were wounded. About a hundred were brought to one hospital alone, doctors said.

"Most of them have been hurt by teargas or in a stampede as they fled," Dr Rajesh Dhoj Joshi said 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 spearheading a democracy campaign rejected overtures by the king to form a government.

Previously, in more than two weeks of protests, demonstrators have been held at the outskirts.

"The proclamation has no meaning," former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala of the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the alliance, said referring to Gyanendra's broadcast on Friday saying he was restoring political power to the people and asking the alliance to name a new prime minister.

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 in Kathmandu shouted as they threw tree branches, scrap and rocks across roads to block vehicles.

Mobile phone services in Kathmandu 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, backed by armoured cars, took up position around the palace as helicopters flew overhead.