Nepalis turned out in huge numbers today to vote in a historic election — the Himalayan nation's first in nine years — that could lead to the abolition of the world's last Hindu monarchy.

Voters began queuing at polling stations before dawn across the nation of 29 million people, sandwiched between China and India, despite a spate of bombings and shootings in the days before the election.

The high turnout reflected widespread hopes that the poll will complete a peace process that began in 2006, when Maoist rebels signed a truce with the Government, ending a decade-long civil war that killed 13,000 people.

“We have had enough of fighting and arguing between the King and the politicians,” Suresh Shretha, 34, a music shop owner, told The Times as he queued to vote at a polling station in Kathmandu, the capital. “We want to make a new Nepal.”

The new 601-seat constituent assembly is supposed to scrap the 240-year-old monarchy at its first meeting, transforming Nepal into a republic, and then to draft a new constitution.

Doubts remain over whether the Maoists — who are still considered terrorists by the United States — will accept the election results, and whether the unpopular King Gyanendra will give up his throne peacefully.

There was further violence today, with Maoists burning down a polling station in the central village of Galkot and gunmen on motorcycles shooting at a candidate in the southern town of Janakpur, local officials said.

Voting was suspended at about 20 polling stations, including some in the eastern district of Ramechap, where Maoists blocked representatives of other parties from observing the vote, the Home Ministry said.

Overall, the election appeared to have proceeded smoothly at the majority of the 20,000 polling stations around the country, some of which are a seven-day walk from the nearest paved road.

“As polls close, it appears to have been an extraordinary day for the people of Nepal,” Kieran Dwyer, a spokesman for the United Nations' mission to Nepal, told The Times.

To help to maintain order, the Government banned the sale of alcohol on polling day and ordered all but official vehicles off the roads to stop trouble-makers visiting multiple polling stations. It deployed 135,000 police and invited 100,000 local and foreign election observers, including British MPs and Jimmy Carter, the former American President.

Political analysts say that the results are hard to predict, because Nepal's political landscape has changed so much since King Birendra, the last monarch, and most of the Royal Family were shot dead by the Crown Prince in 2001.

Most expect the Maoists to come third behind the centrist Nepal Congress and left-wing Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) — roughly reflecting the makeup of the existing interim parliament.

They also expect the biggest problems to occur after the results, especially if the Maoists do not win enough seats to maintain their clout in the interim parliament and government.

Prachanda, the Maoist leader, has promised to accept the results, even if his party does not achieve the majority that he says it should. “Time and again I have tried to clarify our position: even if we don't get a majority, even in that case we'll go ahead with the peace process,” he told The Times.

Other Maoists have said that they could order their 19,000 troops, currently confined to camps, to resume armed struggle if they deem the election to have been rigged against them.

Final results will not be announced until late April or early May because of the complexity of the vote — a mixture of direct elections and a proportional representation system with quotas for women and minorities.

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