At least 132 people were killed and around a hundred others injured in an earthquake that struck a region of western Nepal, according to a new report from Nepalese authorities on Saturday, November 4. A previous report reported 119 deaths. The magnitude 5.6 earthquake was measured at a depth of 18 km, according to the American Geological Survey USGS. It hit the country in the far west of the Himalayas late on Friday evening. Its epicenter was 42 km south of Jumla district, not far from the border with Tibet.
“92 people died in Jajarkot and 40 in Rukum,” Interior Ministry spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai told Agence France-Presse (AFP), naming the two districts currently most affected by the earthquake, located south of the epicenter in the Border province of Karnali.
Nepalese police spokesman Kuber Kathayat said more than 100 were injured in these two districts.
According to Karnali provincial police spokesman Gopal Chandra Bhattarai, Nepalese security forces are deployed extensively in earthquake-hit areas to help with relief operations. “The isolation of the districts makes it difficult to convey information,” he explains. Due to the damage, some roads are closed, but we are attempting to access the area via other routes. »
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Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal arrived in the affected area on Saturday after expressing “deep sadness at the human and physical damage caused by the earthquake.”
Videos and photos posted on social media show residents digging through rubble in the dark to pull survivors from collapsed buildings. It shows destroyed or damaged adobe houses and survivors outside sheltering from possible further collapses as emergency vehicle sirens wail.
Nearly 9,000 dead in a 2015 earthquake
Moderate tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi, the capital of India, which is almost 500 km from the epicenter. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life in Nepal. “India stands in solidarity with the people of Nepal and is ready to provide all possible assistance,” he added.
The quake was followed several hours later by magnitude 4 aftershocks in the same area, according to the USGS. Earthquakes are common in Nepal because it lies on a major geological fault where the Indian tectonic plate intrudes into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayan Mountains.
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Nearly 9,000 people died in 2015 when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal, destroying more than half a million homes and 8,000 schools. Hundreds of monuments and royal palaces, including sites in the Kathmandu Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts tourists from around the world, had suffered irreversible damage.
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