Nepal said at least 11 Maoist guerrillas and one civilian had been killed in the past 24 hours in the Himalayan kingdom as soldiers continued their crackdown on the insurgents.
A Defence Ministry statement said soldiers trying to repulse a rebel attack shot dead nine militants today in Banke district in west Nepal. Two rebels were killed in separate gun battles elsewhere yesterday.
The ministry's statement said the rebels killed a civilian in Baglung district also in west Nepal, a rebel stronghold.
Nepal has struggled to crush a violent Maoist rebellion in which more than 4,000 people have been killed since 1996, some 2,000 of them in the last six months.
Nepal, the world's only Hindu kingdom, deployed its army to crush the rebels under a state of emergency after they walked out of peace talks and broke a truce last November. That emergency has been extended until August.