Two dead as Nepal police use tear gas, sticks to break up pro-monarchy rally

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepali riot police lobbed tear gas, fired water cannon and used rattan sticks on Friday to break up a protest rally demanding the restoration of constitutional monarchy, and at least two people were killed in the violence, police said.

Authorities said they had to use force to stop thousands of protesters breaking into an area where demonstrations and protest rallies are banned, and they later imposed a curfew in the affected area to stem further escalation of the violence.

The two people killed included one of the protesters and a journalist who was covering the rally, a police spokesman, Dinesh Kumar Acharya, told Reuters. Avenues TV said one of its journalists had died when a house he was in was set ablaze.

Another Nepal police spokesman, Shekhar Khanal, said protesters had set fire to a private house and a vehicle, adding that 17 people including three police personnel were injured. Three protesters are in police custody, he said.

A separate anti-monarchy rally also took place in the Nepali capital on Friday but passed peacefully.

A specially elected assembly scrapped the 239-year-old monarchy in 2008, under an accord that ended a Maoist insurgency which had killed 17,000 people in 1996-2006 and turned Nepal into a secular, federal republic from a Hindu kingdom.

The last king of the Himalayan nation, 77-year-old Gyanendra, has lived with his family in a private house in Kathmandu as a commoner since being toppled.

'UNRULY' CROWD

Friday's trouble erupted when thousands of demonstrators, some carrying Nepal's national flag, hurled stones and tried to break a barricade in order to march towards parliament building in central Kathmandu.

One police official, Kumar Neupane, said police fired in the air to drive away the "unruly" crowd.

A Ministry of Home statement said protesters had vandalised private property, hospital, a political party office, vehicles, a media house and a shopping mall.

Ashok Kumar Bhandari, a spokesman for the Kathmandu district administration, said the curfew declared in the affected area was "for a short period of time, till 10 pm (1615 GMT) but can be extended depending on what turn the situation takes".

Nepal, one of the world's poorest countries, has seen the formation of 14 governments in the 16 years since the abolition of the monarchy. The political instability has stymied economic growth, prompting millions of young people to seek work abroad, mainly in the oil-rich Middle East, South Korea and Malaysia.

Public frustration has been rising over the failure of successive governments to deliver on commitments to develop the economy, which remains reliant on aid and tourism. Nepal is home to eight of the world's 14 highest peaks, including Mount Everest.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Sudipto Ganguly and Gareth Jones)