KATHMANDU, Sept 10 (AFP) - Suspected Maoist rebels hurled a bomb at the US cultural centre in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu Friday that exploded inside the compound, causing damage but no casualties, police said.
"The Maoists threw a bomb from the parking lot and badly damaged the toilet and caused damage to an auditorium and to a communications tower but nobody was injured," said a police inspector at the scene, Vijaya Pratap Saha. "It was a bomb attack."
The explosion at the United States Information Service and Cultural Centre occurred just after employees had left the compound for the day to go home, he said.
There was no immediate comment from the US embassy in Nepal on the attack.
It marked the first time that the Maoists, who have been waging an increasingly deadly campaign to overthrow the monarchy and install communist rule, have damaged US government property, police said.
The United States, along with India and Britain, gives military equipment and financial aid to Nepal's government to help it crush the Maoist insurrection.
The blast came as rebels forced nearly three dozen companies to shut in addition to the 12 firms they closed last month, and followed US Ambassador James Francis Moriarty's condemnation of the Maoists' "use of terror against industry and Nepali workers to achieve political goals".
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, on the second day of a five-day trip to India, has appealed for more aid from the kingdom's giant neighbour to crush the revolt which has claimed 10,000 lives since 1996.
The rebels, who already control vast areas of countryside, last month staged a week-long blockade of the capital Kathmandu that was mainly enforced through intimidation rather than roadblocks.