MADHESI nationalists resumed their blockade of southern Nepal yesterday after three of the militants were shot dead by police when they attacked a Communist Party rally.

The United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) called a general strike across the country’s southern plains region, closing markets, schools and transport.

Their supporters blockaded main roads and towns in an echo of the 2015-16 border sit-in that caused acute food, fuel and medicine shortages in the wake of the devastating May 2015 earthquake.

Protesters attacked several government offices and vandalised a vehicle from the National Human Rights Commission, which had a team monitoring the situation.

There were minor clashes between police and the protesters, but no-one was hurt. On Monday, UDMF militants attacked a rally held by the Communist Party of Nepal — Unified Marxist-Leninist in the southern town of Rajbiraj, in Saptari district, ahead of May’s local elections.

Home Ministry official Bal Krishna Panthi said police had at first tried to disperse the protesters with bamboo batons and tear gas before firing their guns. He said three people had been shot dead and 33 police officers injured in the clash.

He could not say how many protesters were wounded. Yesterday the UDMF demanded official recognition as martyrs for its three members who lost their lives, free treatment for the injured, the formation of a committee to investigate the incident and amendments to the constitution.

Madhesi nationalist groups launched the 2015-16 blockade in protest at the country’s long-delayed new constitution, which was drawn up following the 2008 overthrow of King Gyanendra.

The nationalists objected that their historical areas — which extend the length of Nepal’s southern border and overlap with two other ethnic groups’ homelands — would be divided between three of the country’s seven new states.

Royalist parties also objected to the new constitution’s declaration of a secular republican state.