Landslides and floods triggered by several weeks of monsoon rains have killed at least 50 people in mainly remote parts of Nepal, a government official said Thursday.

"So far, 50 people from across the country have been killed by landslides and floods," said Lakshmi Prasad Dhakal, chief of National Emergency Operation Center, which monitors natural disasters in Nepal.

At least 39 people have been killed in landslides and floods triggered by heavy monsoon rain in mainly remote parts of Nepal, a government official said Thursday.

"So far, 39 people from across the country have been killed by landslides and floods," said Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, chief of National Emergency Operation Center, which monitors natural disasters in Nepal.

Saudi woman Raha Moharrak reached the summit of Nepal's Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, in a first for the conservative Muslim kingdom where women's sports are severely restricted, tourism officials said Sunday.

The 25-year-old reached the 8,848-meter (29,029-foot) summit early Saturday morning with a party of foreign mountaineers and Nepalese guides.

Police in Nepal's capital Kathmandu have launched a campaign to round up cows roaming the streets, blaming the sacred animals for car accidents and traffic jams.

"The stray cows and oxen have been a big nuisance in Kathmandu streets. They not only cause accidents, but also make the streets untidy," Pawan Giri, spokesman for the Kathmandu Metropolitan Traffic Police, told Agence France Presse.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter on Monday called on a hardline Maoist faction in Nepal to renounce violence in the run-up to general elections expected in coming months.

Nepal's political system has operated in a legislative vacuum since May last year when parliament was dissolved after squabbling lawmakers failed to agree on a new constitution.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter headed Friday to Myanmar and Nepal, hoping to find ways to encourage democracy in the two Asian nations, which are undergoing political transitions.

Carter, 88, will first head to Nepal, where he will encourage political parties to hold delayed elections and to move forward on reconciliation from the civil war, the Atlanta-based Carter Center said in a statement.

Nepalese police arrested 11 people in Kathmandu on suspicion of "anti-China activities" on Sunday morning, the anniversary of the 1959 rebellion against China's rule in Tibet.

"Some of the people we arrested were Tibetan but we have not interrogated all of them yet," police spokesman Uttam Subedi told Agence France Presse.

The Asian Development Bank said Tuesday it had approved a $150-million loan for a giant hydropower plant to ease Nepal's chronic electricity shortages which lead to power cuts of up to 14 hours a day.

Electricity demand is growing at 10 percent a year but a lack of investment has resulted in short supply, with loadshedding forcing homes and businesses across the impoverished nation to use costly and polluting diesel generators.

A Tibetan protester in monk's robes doused himself with gasoline, set himself ablaze and chanted anti-China slogans as he ran down a street in Nepal's capital Wednesday, the latest in a string of self-immolations protesting China's rule over Tibet.

The dramatic protest marked the 101st time since 2009 that a Tibetan monk, nun or layperson has set themselves on fire, according to officials from the Tibetan exile government, based in India. The protesters are calling for Beijing to allow greater religious freedom and the return from exile of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in India.

A mega-quake in 1255 that wrecked the Nepalese capital, wiped out a third of the population of Kathmandu Valley and killed the country's monarch, King Abhaya Malla, was of a kind that may return to the Himalayas, seismologists reported on Sunday.

Experts from Nepal, France and Singapore mapped deposits of river sediment displaced along part of the fault line where the Indian subcontinent slams into the Asia tectonic plate at up to 50 millimeters (1.97 inches) per year.