KATHMANDU (AFP) - A wild leopard sparked alarm in Nepal's capital on Wednesday (June 1) after it spent hours wandering through a residential neighbourhood before being sedated and captured.

A Kathmandu resident alerted the police around dawn after he spotted the big cat in the compound of his house.

Police called in zoo and wildlife officials who tracked the animal as it clambered over rooftops and padded through backyards, while local residents watched from their balconies.

"They were able to tranquilise it and it has been transported to the zoo now. No one was injured," Mr Hem Bahadur Thapa of the city police told AFP.

Nepal's common leopards are usually found in the southern plains and in forested hill regions, but they have recently strayed into human settlements due to a loss of habitat.

In two separate incidents in January, officials were called in to catch leopards which had wandered into densely-populated Kathmandu neighbourhoods.

In 2012, a leopard is suspected to have killed more than a dozen people in the country's remote western region before hunters shot it dead.

Nepal is also home to snow leopards, which are found in the mountains and are listed as "endangered" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.