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Last update: April 11, 2006 – 6:10 PM

# AP Blog: Nepal Protests Vs. King Gyanendra

AP Correspondent Matthew Rosenberg is in Nepal to cover protests against King Gyanendra, who has grown increasingly unpopular since seizing power 14 months ago and is under intense pressure to restore democracy.

By The Associated Press, Associated Press

AP Correspondent Matthew Rosenberg is in Nepal to cover protests against King Gyanendra, who has grown increasingly unpopular since seizing power 14 months ago and is under intense pressure to restore democracy.

TUESDAY, April 11, 4:15 p.m., local

KATMANDU, Nepal

In Gangabu, on the outskirts of Katmandu, police and soldiers have been facing off against protesters for five days. Gunfire that we'd heard earlier in the neighborhood, it turns out, started after protesters tried to set fire to a senior police official's house. His security guards shot into the air to scare them off.

In the two hours since, the police have opened up with rubber bullets, allowing them to push the protesters back and move into the side streets, now littered with shards of glass and broken bricks.

Police are still battling holdouts holed up between the tightly packed three-and four-story buildings.

Walking down an alley, three injured civilians are rushed passed us, carried by medics and volunteers to ambulances on the main road. The lingering tear gas sting our eyes.

We see six police officers on a roof beating someone who's down and not getting up. They're kicking and whacking the victim with bamboo polls.

Further into the neighborhood, there's a rundown community clinic. Up the dark staircase, we find two rooms full of injured. One man, 21-year-old Avil Moktan, is lying on a gurney while doctors and medics pull a rubber bullet from his back and suture the baton gashes on his head.

All around us are angry people. They're promising more protests until King Gyanendra restores democracy.

-Matthew Rosenberg

TUESDAY, April 11, 2:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Hundreds of police and soldiers are positioned on a main road in Katmandu's Gangabu neighborhood, facing off on the city outskirts against protesters hurling bricks from side streets. Burning tires, tear gas, occasional charges by riot police with shields and batons. Tense, to be sure, but manageable as long as you stay out of the range of the bricks.

A burst of gunfire sends hundreds of police and soldiers scurrying for cover. No one knows where the fire is coming from or what's being fired. Rubber bullets? Live ammunition? Not even the security forces know.

-Matthew Rosenberg

TUESDAY, April 11, 1 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Tourists are biking around downtown Katmandu, the streets completely empty apart from well-armed police and soldiers enforcing a daytime curfew. As we drive past the seven of men and woman - all Westerners, all pedaling away - one of the guys grins broadly at me and waves.

-Matthew Rosenberg

TUESDAY, April 11, 11:55 a.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

The curfew in Katmandu was lifted for a few hours this morning, and throughout the city people poured out of their homes to stock up on supplies. Even amid the anger over the curfew, people seemed to want to soak in the freedom and try to enjoy themselves for a little while.

It's amazing how quickly the mood changes. The curfew's kicking back in at 12 p.m. - five minutes from now - and as we cruise down streets now largely deserted of people or traffic, we see police brandishing batons at stragglers who have not yet made it inside.

A middle-aged woman who stopped to pick up some dropped groceries is pushed along by an officer. A young man hanging out in an open doorway gets whacked by a cop's bamboo poll.

A soldier on patrol sees us and marches over, demanding to see our curfew pass, which allows us to move around the city freely. Unimpressed, he orders us to move on, waving the barrel of his assault rifle at us and then down the road.

-Matthew Rosenberg

MONDAY, April 10, 2 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

A group of Australian school girls are collecting their bags at Katmandu airport just as I'm arriving to cover the country's surprisingly quick descent into a full-blown crisis. And I thought the gaggle of Canadian retirees coming through immigration looked a bit out of place.

It's Monday afternoon, and protests against the royal dictatorship of King Gyanendra are into their fifth day. It doesn't seem like a good time for a two-week trekking tour of Nepal, where a decade-long communist insurgency has left nearly 13,000 people dead.

In recent days, three people have been shot dead by security forces who opened fire with live ammunition at stone-throwing protesters over the weekend. The dead include a bystander.

Three cities, including Katmandu, are under curfew.

And angry young men across the country are burning tires and hurling stones and broken bricks at police, who are firing tear gas and rubber bullets and charging in to beat them with batons.

On Saturday, some 25,000 protesters took over the southern town of Bharatnagar. They burned government buildings and started calling the place "the kingdom's first republic'' before security forces regained control.

Dr. Vijay Sharma, a senior surgeon in Katmandu, told AP just hours before I arrived Monday that "unless the situation improves immediately, there are chances of civil war.''

-Matthew Rosenberg

(PROFILE (COUNTRY:Australia; ISOCOUNTRY3:AUS; UNTOP:009; UN2ND:053; APGROUP:Oceania;) (COUNTRY:Canada; ISOCOUNTRY3:CAN; UNTOP:021; APGROUP:NorthAmerica;) (COUNTRY:Nepal; ISOCOUNTRY3:NPL; UNTOP:142; UN2ND:062; APGROUP:Asia;)