KATHMANDU, Nov 2: Nepal has deployed its army to two tense rural areas where Maoists have clashed with local residents, officials said on Friday.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said an unspecified army contingent was sent to the far western district of Jumla, where seven people were injured last week when villagers clashed with Maoists who allegedly blocked them from praying at a Hindu temple.

The Maoists then snatched four local members of Nepal’s main parliamentary opposition, the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist and Leninist, but released them on Friday.

Some 50 army troops were also sent on Wednesday to the western town of Betini, where villagers had killed the vice chairman of a Maoist-run local committee, home ministry sources said.

In retaliation for the slaying, some 75 Maoists vandalized the home of the town’s development committee chairman while he was in Kathmandu. No members of the local official’s family were injured, the sources said.

The army has only been deployed against the Maoists since King Gyanendra took the throne in June.

The Maoists, who run a virtual de facto state in parts of Nepal, have stepped up their activities amid a deadlocked peace process.

More than 1,800 people have been killed since Maoists launched their “people’s war” against the Nepalese government in 1996.

FOUR CAPTIVES FREED: Maoists fighting to topple Nepal’s constitutional monarchy have released four people including a former legislator captured in west Nepal recently, private Kantipur FM radio reported on Friday.—Reuters/AFP