KATHMANDU, March 11: Nepal freed on Friday former premier Sher Bahadur Deuba and 17 other detainees held since King Gyanendra seized power last month, a party official said, amid mounting pressure on the nation to restore civil liberties.

“Our party president Deuba and other senior leaders were set free today (Friday),” Nepali Congress Democratic party secretary Jivan Prem Shrestha said AFP in the capital Kathmandu.

King Gyanendra dismissed Deuba’s multi-party government on February 1 and seized control of Nepal, imposing emergency rule and vowing to tackle an increasingly bloody Maoist revolt that has claimed 11,000 lives since 1996.

“In the process of liberalisation of the political situation in Nepal, other political detainees are also being released gradually,” a cabinet source said, giving no further details.

However former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, Nepal’s first elected premier, remained under house arrest, with human rights activists and members of his Nepali Congress party increasingly concerned about the 82-year-old’s health.

Madhav Kumar Nepal, a senior leader of the main opposition Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist Leninist which formed part of the dismissed coalition government, was also still under house arrest.

The release of the 18 came after a day after security officials freed eight other party leaders and activists.

On Thursday, Nepal’s royal-appointed foreign minister, Ramesh Nath Pandey, said “certain rights of the people ... will be restored sooner rather than later”. But he gave no details and set no timeframe.

Nepal has come under increasing pressure from the world community, including international donors, to free political detainees.

Human rights groups say over 400 activists are in detention or under house arrest. But Pandey, said on a visit to India earlier in the week “very few people are in detention.”—AFP