KATHMANDU, April 24: Rebels fighting a bloody war to topple Nepal’s constitutional monarchy torched the prime minister’s country home on Tuesday night in the latest in a wave of high-profile raids on the kingdom’s leadership.

Some 100 rebels attacked Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s ancestral home after ordering caretakers to flee and witnesses said the building was still smouldering on Wednesday.

“They came in, asked the people to come out, take their goods out of the house, and bombed it,” he said. “No family member was living there,” he said, adding no one was hurt.

Deuba lives in Kathmandu.

An investigation team was dispatched to the remote house and officials were waiting to hear from them. The rebels have attacked the village homes of two other ministers in the past two weeks, killing dozens of policemen.

The traditionally tranquil mountain nation, birthplace of Buddha, is still reeling from the June massacre of popular King Birendra and other royal family members by Crown Prince Dipendra, who later shot himself.

The Maoists, who want to replace the constitutional monarchy in the world’s only Hindu kingdom with a communist state, control about a quarter of Nepal’s 150,000 square kilometres territory.—Reuters