$ 60M WB LOAN FOR BUILDING, MAINTAINING BRIDGES Kathmandu, 29 June: World Bank (WB) has approved a US$60 million loan to help Nepal maintain and construct bridges in its strategic roads network, an announcement said Friday. nder the project dubbed Bridges Improvement and Maintenance Program, Eighty-nine bridges will be maintained, 300 bridges will undergo major and minor maintenance and 121 new bridges will be built under bridges improvement and maintenance progamme, the bank said.. “Three quarters of the bridges require urgent maintenance and the costs are estimated at under $250,000 per bridge,” the statement quotes Farhad Ahmed, task team leader at the World Bank, as saying. “Similar estimates suggest that most of the new bridges will cost less than $1 million each.” WB will provide approximately 40 percent of program financing an government will contribute the balance. nnnn ________________________________________ 17 MAOISTS KILLED IN CHHATTISGARH BY SECURITY FORCES Kathmandu, 29 June: At least 17 Indian Maoist rebels were killed during a gun battle Friday with security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh, a hotbed of left-wing extremism, police said, AFP reports Friday. The gunfight erupted in the early hours of the morning in a thickly forested area of Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, about 295 kilometres (184 miles) south of the state capital Raipur. "In a fierce gun battle in Farkeguda forest 17 Maoists were killed today," district police superintendent Prashant Agrawal told AFP by phone. Six Maoists and six members of the security forces were wounded, he added. Security forces are combing the area in search of more Maoist fighters, after the rebels ambushed a police patrol and shot dead six officers and a civilian in the state last month. The Maoists have been fighting a deadly low-intensity war against authorities for decades for what they say are the rights of tribal people and landless farmers. The government describes the guerrillas as India's most serious internal security threat. Nnnn