Bomb blast strikes Nepal capital: Police

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At least three people were killed and five wounded in an explosion near government offices in Kathmandu on Monday, police said, in the first bomb attack in the Nepali capital for three years.

The device, which went off at 1:25pm (0740 GMT) in a busy area of the capital as workers were heading out of offices on their lunch break, killed two people on the spot while a third died later in hospital, officers said.

"A special team of police have been deployed in the area. They are gathering evidence and the area has been cordoned off," said Nepal Police spokesman Binod Singh.

Nepal has enjoyed an uneasy calm since rebel Maoists waged a 10-year war against the government until a peace deal was struck in 2006.

Monday's attack is the first such incident in Kathmandu since the bombing of a packed Roman Catholic church on the outskirts of the capital in 2009, which killed a woman and a teenage girl.

Live television television pictures broadcast after Monday's attack showed blood spattered across the road while police cleared panicked office workers from an area surrounding one body.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb, which went off outside the offices of the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC).

"We rushed to the site after hearing the explosion. There was panic and crying," said Ramesh Koirala, chief of the NOC's administration department.

"I saw that one body was piled up on another. The police haven't picked up the dead bodies yet. There were internal organs scattered across the road. One of our employees, who is in his 30s has been seriously injured."

Bystanders described their shock in the aftermath of the attack as Nepal's Home Minister Bijay Kumar Gachchadar visited the site and ordered stepped-up security.

"There was a sudden explosion while we were talking and we ran for cover," a witness told News 24 TV.

"We assumed that sound of the explosion was from a punctured tyre but we quickly realised that it was a bomb blast."

Three people were killed and two others injured in December 2009 when a bomb went off in the southwest of the country but the device was thought to be a left-over from the Maoist insurgency.