KATHMANDU, Jan 23: Hundreds of riot police patrolled two southeastern Nepal towns on Tuesday, imposing a day curfew after violent anti-government protests by ethnic Madhesis which have clouded a peace process ending a decade of civil war.

Four people were killed and dozens wounded in Monday's clashes between police and protesters from the Terai plain who say they have been sidelined by the peace deal that brought former Maoist rebels into the political mainstream.

The latest violence in the town of Lahan, 125 km southeast of the capital, Kathmandu, was the worst since the November peace deal ended a decade of killings, abductions and disappearances that had left 13,000 people dead.

Local television showed Lahan's deserted streets with the charred remains of buses torched by protesters at the weekend.

The government held an emergency meeting on Tuesday and called for talks with political groups involved in the conflict, including the Madhesi People's Rights Forum that organised the protests.

REGIONAL AUTONOMY: The Terai is a narrow strip of fertile flat land. Its Madhesi inhabitants share closer cultural links with India than with Nepalis in the Himalayan mountains of the north.