Nepal crackdown: 400 dead

KATHMANDU, Nepal (CNN) -- Nepal's government estimates its forces killed nearly 400 Maoist rebels in recent raids on two rebel training camps, a government official said Saturday.

The official, a junior security minister, said 350 rebels died in Rolpa and 40 in Doti in the joint army and police operations late Thursday in the two districts, known as Maoist hotbeds. They are located in far western parts of the Himalayan kingdom.

Initially, the government said about 90 rebels were killed in both districts.

The heavy rebel casualties came the same day as top rebel leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, chairman of the Maoist rebel Communist Party of Nepal, issued a statement calling for renewed peace negotiations with the government to find "a positive political way out" of the problem.

Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba rejected the peace overture Friday, saying he would not hold negotiations "with the disciples of Pol Pot."

IN-DEPTH Nepal's Maoist rebellion

"There will be no peace negotiations until the Maoists lay down their arms and surrender," he said.

Pol Pot was the infamous leader of Cambodia's communist Khmer Rouge, blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people through torture, execution, hard labor and starvation between 1975-1979. Pol Pot died in 1998.

More than 2,500 people have died in Nepal since the Maoists surfaced in 1996 with their "people's war" campaign. They are aiming to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy in favor of a communist republic.

About a dozen U.S. military personnel were in Nepal in late April to assess how to spend U.S. funds to fight the Maoist insurgents, the Pentagon said. The government of Nepal had asked for international assistance, and the United States responded with $20 million in aid from the State Department.

-- Journalist Suman Pradhan contributed to this report