Katmandu, Nepa ? Suspected communist rebels in southern Nepal ambushed an army truck, shot a police chief and attacked villagers Sunday, killing at least 14 people a day after lifting a highway blockade that crippled the flow of essential supplies in protest of the king’s recent power grab.

The rebels ambushed an army truck carrying soldiers on patrol near Patlaiya, about 160 miles south of Katmandu, killing eight of them, police said.

Another 10 soldiers were injured and taken to hospitals, a spokesman at the army headquarters in Katmandu said.

In nearby Butwal, suspected rebels fatally shot the town’s police chief and his assistant before escaping.

Separately, insurgents killed four people in overnight attacks on villages in the south, police said. Villagers in the area have shown rare defiance of the rebels, killing 21 guerrillas in the past few days.

The rebels announced Saturday they were lifting the blockade to ease the discomfort of the common people. However, they vowed to step up their campaign against the army.

“We are going to start a new phase of movement increasing military resistance and mass movement of people,” rebel chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, said in a statement.

A Nepalese army spokesman declined comment.

The insurgents, who have been fighting for more than eight years to topple the monarchy and install communist rule, blocked the country’s highways using crude bombs, mines and boulders, disrupting deliveries of basic supplies across the Himalayan kingdom and choking off major cities.

On Sunday, some 40 oil tankers brought much-needed gasoline, diesel and kerosene to the capital, Katmandu, which had been facing a fuel shortage.

The insurgents said the blockades were in protest of King Gyanendra’s decision Feb. 1 to sack the government, impose emergency rule and suspend civil liberties. The monarch, who says he was forced to act because of the insurgency, has ignored repeated calls to restore democracy.