Nepal explosions latest: Three dead and six injured in Kathmandu blasts blamed on breakaway Maoist rebels
Splinter group suspected to be behind crude improvised explosive devices
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Your support makes all the difference.Three people have been killed and six others injured in two explosions in Kathmandu.
Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the blasts, local police suspect a splinter group of Maoist rebels may be behind the deadly explosions.
The first suspected bombing took place inside a house in the Ghattekulo district in the south of the Nepalese capital and killed one person.
Local eyewitnesses reported the force of the blast was so great it cracked the walls of the home.
The second explosion took place about an hour later outside a hairdresser in the Sukedhara neighbourhood, several miles further north.
Two people were killed in this second blast and a further six injured, who have all been taken to hospital.
The second explosion was powerful enough to shatter both the windowpanes and the door of the shop.
Police official Shyam Lal Gyawali said an investigation into the cause of the twin explosions was still under way, but told Reuters news agency the working theory was a small splinter group of Maoist rebels was responsible.
“A pamphlet from the group has been found at the site of the first blast,” he said. One of those injured is a member of the rebels and the home damaged in the first explosion was being used to construct crude improvised explosive devices, he added.
Although the bulk of the communist rebels who fought a long civil war in Nepal have since joined the ruling party, a breakaway group has been opposed to the government, which has been arresting some of its supporters.
An explosion in Kathmandu in February – which killed one person and injured two others – is also believed to have been carried out by the splinter group.
A spokesman for the Nepali army said one of its bomb disposal units had been dispatched to the Lalitpur suburb of the capital in response to reports a suspicious pressure cooker covered in tape had been seen near a bus terminal.
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