| Wednesday November 24, 05:56 PM
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KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's army says it has recovered the bodies of 32 Maoist guerrillas after a major battle in west Nepal in which hundreds more may have died.
"I think that at least 300 may have been killed. This is a big success and with minimum losses on our side," Brigadier General Rajendra Thapa, chief of army operations in Kailali district, said on Wednesday where the weekend fighting took place.
Local Maoist leaders telephoned newspaper offices in the area and insisted only nine guerrillas were killed in the battle that erupted on Saturday night when rebels attacked an army patrol in heavily forested hills.
Nepal's army frequently says it has killed large number of guerrillas, even when few bodies have been found. It says the Maoists usually take away the bodies of their comrades.
Thapa said 10 soldiers were killed in the fighting in Kailali, a rebel stronghold 415 miles from Kathmandu.
The battle was the deadliest since last month, when a temporary truce between the Maoists and government forces ended during the Hindu festival of Dasai, marking the triumph of good over evil.
A local reporter who visited the site of the fighting on Wednesday said he saw half-naked bodies of suspected rebels on the mountain slopes.
"The area was stinking, bodies were rotting with flies on them. It was a disgusting scene," said Dipak Rijal, a reporter for local daily Nepal Samachar Patra.
More than 10,000 people have died since the Maoists rose in revolt in 1996, seeking to topple the constitutional monarch and set up a communist republic.
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