By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 23, 2006; A12
KATHMANDU, Nepal, April 22 -- Defying another curfew Saturday, only this time in the very center of the capital, the protesters had stopped in the tiny square to regroup, and perhaps to take stock of the scores of riot police waiting on the edge of the historic Thamel district little more than a mile from the royal palace.
That was when they attacked.
With bloodcurdling yells, the police in their helmets and light-blue camouflage uniforms unleashed a volley of tear gas and rubber bullets, then charged the protesters, smashing long wooden batons into rib cages, heads and extremities. The protesters broke and ran, but in the panic many of them fell, raising arms to ward off blows that fell without mercy. One of the policemen smiled and laughed; most worked with a grim and methodical efficiency.
When it was over a minute or two later, acrid fumes hung in the air and the ancient paving stones were covered with blood and abandoned shoes and sandals. Several people lay injured, including a boy in jeans and a yellow T-shirt who appeared to be in his early teens. He was unconscious, and blood poured from a wound to his head.
Foreign journalists tried to stanch the bleeding with cloth; after 10 minutes or so, a small, white ambulance maneuvered into the square and the boy's limp form was bundled inside along with other injured and taken away.
The violence came just a day after King Gyanendra offered to turn power over to political parties in hopes of ending more than two weeks of street protests and strikes that have brought the Himalayan country to a virtual standstill. Fourteen people have died in clashes with security forces, and hundreds more have been injured.
On Saturday, party leaders formally rejected the monarch's offer as insufficient, and tens of thousands of protesters drove home the point by pouring into the center of the capital for the first time since the latest democracy movement began earlier this month.
"We almost have won," said Fanindra Dhamala, 32, a ponytailed trekking-company owner who joined the marchers in Thamel on Saturday. "We don't want to stop."
For the past decade, Nepal has been battling a Maoist insurgency, and Gyanendra last year suspended elected government and assumed powers of direct rule, defending the move as necessary to defeat the rebels.
Though many Nepalis initially welcomed Gyanendra's power grab, the king's failure to improve security, or chart a clear path to democracy, has turned much of the country against him. Political parties are insisting that he restore the last elected parliament as a first step toward writing a new constitution in which the monarchy could be weakened or eliminated.
The parties, which have formed a loose alliance with the Maoists, also insist that any new government be vested with authority to negotiate a settlement with the rebels. The king's offer in a television address Friday night met none of those conditions, party leaders said.
"We will not accept," Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of Communist Party of Nepal, told a cheering crowd in Kathmandu. "We will continue the protests."
Gyanendra's offer was welcomed by many foreign governments, including the United States, as offering a basis for negotiations that could bring an end to the political crisis in the kingdom of 27 million people.
"The parties don't think he has done enough, but we think it is basis on which we can build and move forward," British Ambassador Keith George Bloomfield said after he and other envoys met with party leaders here Saturday morning.
About the same time, a crowd estimated at 100,000 was marching from the edge of the capital toward the city center. To prevent protesters from penetrating any farther, and perhaps approaching the palace itself, police threw a tight cordon around Thamel, a popular tourist destination whose maze of alleys is crammed with ancient Hindu temples, small guesthouses and business offering trekking services and ayurvedic massage.
Despite the unrest, small numbers of foreign backpackers have remained in Thamel, and some of them joined the marchers or cheered them on from the sidelines.
The trouble came when the marchers approached the edge of the district in hopes of gathering in Ratna Park, about a mile from Gyanendra's 18-acre palace compound.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at several locations, driving the protesters back and causing scores of injuries, some of them serious, according to doctors at several Kathmandu hospitals. Doctors at Bir Hospital said some of the injured appeared to have been hit by live ammunition.