Nepal's army searched in driving monsoon rains on Wednesday for 75 soldiers missing after a major attack by Maoist rebels as the UN urged the guerrillas to treat any captives humanely, the military and a report said Wednesday.
The army said the poor weather conditions were hampering the search for the missing soldiers and fugitive rebels whose attack on a camp near the north-western town of Kalikot claimed at least 66 lives.
"The visibility is very bad - just 30 meters (yards)," an army official told AFP on condition of anonymity. He said the rebels were making use of the conditions to escape.
Another missing soldier had been traced by Wednesday, the official said, leaving 75 still unaccounted for after Sunday night's attack by hundreds of rebels on the army camp in a remote jungle area.
The army on Tuesday accused the rebels of lining up 40 soldiers and shooting them in the head and of mutilating some of their bodies. The rebels said 26 of their fighters died and that they had captured another 50 soldiers.
The head of the Nepal office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Ian Martin, has urged the Maoists to behave "humanely" with all troops captured during the assault, private news website Kantipuronline.com reported.
Martin, speaking in the south-western town of Nepalgunj where he Tuesday inaugurated a regional OHCHR office, told reporters that his office was investigating reported cases of arbitrary abductions, extra-judicial killings and disappearances by police, army and the Maoists.
Sunday's attack was the deadliest since King Gyanendra seized power in February claiming the move was necessary to deal with the insurgency, which has claimed 12,000 lives in the past nine years.
The rebels said they killed 159 Nepalese soldiers - a claim the military has dismissed. The army official said that according to locals, around 200 rebels died in the all-night gunbattle but their bodies were taken away by their colleagues. On Tuesday state television, also citing locals, said some 300 rebels had died.
None of the claims could be verified but analysts say the military appears to have made little headway since the king's seizure of power against the rebels, who are fighting to install a communist republic.
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