Kathmandu: Nepal’s new Prime Minister Sushila Karki has called for calm and urged her compatriots to “get together to rebuild the country” after violent protests against corruption killed at least 72 people and injured hundreds more. In her first public remarks since becoming the Himalayan nation’s interim prime minister on Friday, Sushila Karki said on Sunday that the country must listen to its young citizens. “We have to work according to the thinking of the Gen Z generation,” the 73-year-old former chief justice said, referring to the demographic that led the anticorruption protests. “What this group is demanding is the end of corruption, good governance and economic equality,” she noted.

Karki added that she had not wished to lead but her name was “brought from the streets”. Karki was made interim prime minister after several days of negotiations among protest leaders, President Ramchandra Paudel and army chief Ashok Raj Sigdel. Paudel had earlier announced that Parliament had been dissolved and elections had been set for March 5.