Eleven suspected Maoist rebels including two local leaders were killed in armed clashes with security forces in western Nepal Thursday, police said.
The two leaders were killed as they tried to throw bombs at a security force patrol unit, officers said.
However, a Maoist source claimed the two were killed by the army after they had been arrested.
Police identified the two leaders as Bharat Dhungana, Maoist party member of the Rasuwa, Dhading and Nuwakot districts, and Baikuntha Pokharel, a pro-Maoist students' union member in Dhading.
The chairman of the pro-Maoist All Nepal National Free Students' Union (Revolutionary), Lekhnath Neupane, vowed to launch violent protests in response to Pokharel's death.
"We are not going to sit for negotiation with the government any more but we will be launching our struggle more violently, protesting against the murder of our friend Baikuntha Pokharel," he said by phone from an undisclosed location.
Nine other Maoist rebels were also killed in clashes with security forces at Sailung village (far west) on Thursday, police said.
Separately, an elderly woman was killed and five other people wounded in two separate bomb blasts Thursday on the outskirts of Nepal's capital that were believed to have been caused by Maoist rebels, police said.
Lalitpur district police officer Keshav Adhikari said they were probing whether the woman was asked by the Maoists to plant one of the bombs.
In another explosion Thursday three people were wounded at a garment factory at Sukedhara on the eastern Kathmandu outskirts, police said.
Late Wednesday, on the western edge of Kathmandu, suspected rebels shot dead a school teacher as he dined with his wife at a restaurant, police said.
The rebels have been fighting for a communist republic in Nepal since 1996 and the uprising has so far claimed more than 9,500 lives.