People have died in an earthquake that struck a remote region of Nepal where relief efforts are being organized to search for survivors, according to a new report from Nepalese authorities on Saturday.
• Also read: More than 119 dead in earthquake in Nepal
The magnitude 5.6 earthquake occurred 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, not far from the border with Tibet.
“There was a huge noise as the houses collapsed, it sounded like a big explosion,” Shiva Prasad Sharma, 65, told AFP in front of the remains of his destroyed home in Jajarkot, the most densely populated region hit by the earthquake.
“I thought we were all going to die,” he added. “Nobody has anything anymore, there are no houses left.”
AFP
Videos and photos posted on social media showed residents sifting through the rubble in the dark to look for survivors in the collapsed buildings.
We see destroyed or damaged adobe houses and survivors huddling outside to protect themselves from possible further collapses as emergency vehicle sirens wail.
“We were sleeping. There were three of us in the house, only two of us survived,” Kamala Oli, a woman we met at a hospital in Nepalgunj, a small town near the Indian border, told AFP.
“105 people died in Jajarkot and 52 in Rukum,” police spokesman Kuber Kathayat told AFP in a new report. Authorities said nearly 200 people were injured in these two districts south of the epicenter in the border province of Karnali.
Interior Ministry spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai said authorities had managed to contact all affected regions on Saturday and estimated that the death toll was expected to continue to rise, although it was “still possible that we could have some.” Find bodies under the rubble.” .
AFP
According to Karnali provincial police spokesman Gopal Chandra Bhattarai, Nepalese security forces have been deployed to earthquake-hit areas to help with relief operations.
“The isolation of the districts makes it difficult to transmit information,” he added. “Some roads are closed due to the damage, but we are trying to reach the area by other means.”
In Jajarkot, the local hospital was stormed by residents who were transporting injured people there.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal arrived in the affected area on Saturday after expressing “deep sorrow over the human and physical damage caused by the earthquake.”
“The government is committed to helping the victims and treating the injured,” he said.
Major geological fault
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 human losses in Nepal and said his country was ready to “provide all assistance.”
Earthquakes are common in Nepal, a country located on a major geological fault where the Indian tectonic plate sinks into the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayan Mountains.
AFP
The quake was followed several hours later by magnitude 4 aftershocks in the same area, according to the USGS.
In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and destroyed more than half a million homes and more than 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, affecting Nepali tourism.