Over 1000 protestors were arrested in Nepal on the first day of an Opposition-sponsored general strike against King Gyanendra’s direct rule even as 21 people including an Indian were killed in clashes between Maoists and security forces and a subsequent Army chopper crash.

An Opposition activist also died after being brutally beaten by police ahead of the four-day strike called by the seven-party alliance for restoration of democracy.

Besides many journalists, those arrested from the capital included Nepal Congress central members Dinbandhu Shrestha, Mina Pandey and Sujata Koirala, Nepal Communist Party-UML’s central member Vidya Bhandari and Communist veteran Mohanchandra Adhikari, party sources said.

Over a dozen people were injured, two of them seriously, when riot police clashed with demonstrators in Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Kirtipur, Kalanki, Gongabun and Bhaktapur. Police baton-charged and tear-gassed protestors in different places.

Nepal Communist Party-UML sources said an activist who was beaten by police during a protest on the eve of the strike succumbed to his injuries last night.

Maoists, who had declared support to the strike, raided government and security establishments in Malangawa, district headquarters of Sarlahi, 120 km south of the capital.

An Indian working in a hotel was among those killed in the fierce firing that followed in the town bordering India. Five policemen, four rebels and a local trader also died.

Later, at least 10 Royal Nepal Army soldiers died when a chopper sent to carry out aerial raids on the rebels crashed in a river two km west of the town.

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