Updated 4/11/23 at 1:35 p.m
Emergency services are organizing the search for survivors. At least 143 people were killed in an earthquake that struck a remote region of Nepal, according to a new report from Nepalese authorities on Saturday. The magnitude 5.6 earthquake was measured at a depth of 18 km, according to the American Geological Survey USGS. It hit the far west of the Himalayan country late on Friday evening. Its epicenter was 42 km south of Jumla, not far from the border with Tibet.
“105 people died in Jajarkot and 38 in Rukum,” Home Ministry spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai said, referring to the two districts currently most affected by the earthquake, located to the south of the epicenter in the border province of Karnali.
An earthquake as early as November 2022
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.
In Jajarkot, the local hospital was stormed by residents who were transporting injured people there. Videos and photos posted on social media show residents digging through rubble in the dark to pull survivors from collapsed buildings. In November 2022, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in Doti district near Jajarkot killed six people on Friday evening.