Clashes between suspected Maoist rebels and villagers in west Nepal have killed 46 people over recent weeks, the head of a state-funded human rights group said today.
Nepal has faced for nearly a decade a bloody Maoist revolt, which aims to overthrow the nation's monarchy.
Nayan Bahadur Khatri, head of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), said villagers in the Kapilvastu district of west Nepal had killed 31 people suspected to be Maoists or Maoist sympathisers in February and March.
Fifteen others died in retaliatory attacks, he said.
"Nearly 500 houses were also set ablaze and thousands of people fled to neighboring India or were displaced in the violence," Mr Khatri said.
Mr Khatri said the clashes erupted after the Maoists, who control huge swathes of the countryside, abducted two villagers.
Maoists, who want to establish a single-party communist republic, often kidnap villagers for indoctrination or to extort money.
The NHRC is state-funded but was established under an act of parliament, which gives it a fair degree of independence.