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- Author: Nathan Williams
- Scroll, from BBC News
4 hours ago
Security forces were deployed to help with rescue efforts in the rugged Jajarkot and West Rukum districts, 500 km west of the capital Kathmandu.
Strong tremors were felt far away in the Nepalese capital and in cities in neighboring India, including Delhi.
An army spokesman said more than 100 people were injured. The hospital in Jajarkot is full of injured people.
One survivor, Geethakumari Bista, told the BBC that rescuers managed to save her eldest daughter, but she lost her youngest daughter.
“The three of us were in the same room, on the top floor. It all happened so suddenly. We couldn’t understand what was happening,” she remembers.
After their house collapsed, they were buried under rubble.
“People were screaming. The armed police came and I screamed, ‘I’m alive too’… First they rescued my eldest daughter, carried her and brought her downstairs. Unfortunately they couldn’t save my youngest daughter. She was 14.”
An hour after the earthquake, three more tremors were felt. Many people spent the rest of the night outdoors, fearing more earthquakes and damage to their homes.
Video footage posted on social media showed collapsed house facades. And people were photographed digging through rubble in the dark to pull survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Unicef Nepal said it was assessing the damage and impact of the disaster on children and families.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal arrived in the affected region on Saturday (November 4) after taking to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to express his “deep sadness” over the loss of life and property due to the earthquake had. He said he had ordered security agencies to immediately begin rescue and relief operations.
But search and rescue operations are being hampered by road closures due to landslides triggered by the earthquake.
Photo credit: NARENDRA SHRESTHA/EPAEFE/REX/Shutterstock
caption,
Doctor examines xrays of an earthquake victim at Bheri Hospital in Nepalgunj, Nepal
“We slept. We felt like we were going to die,” said Laxman Pun, an earthquake survivor whose house was damaged. “We don’t know where we can stay overnight. We will probably need tents,” he told BBC Nepali.
“Our house rocked back and forth like a swing. As we ran outside, houses and dust were falling everywhere. We couldn’t see anything so we went back inside. We came out after the shaking stopped,” said Siddha Bohora, a bank manager from Jajarkot.
According to the Nepal Monitoring and Research Center, the earthquake was recorded at 11:47 p.m. local time (3:02 p.m. Brazil time).
The US Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 5.6 and said it was a shallow earthquake, meaning it occurred closer to the Earth’s surface.
Nepal is located on the Himalayas, where there is a lot of seismic activity.
Last month, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake was recorded in the western district of Bajhang, resulting in injuries.
In 2015, the country was hit by two devastating earthquakes, killing 9,000 people and injuring 22,309.
The first earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on April 25, 2015 caused the most damage and fatalities. Then there were numerous aftershocks, including one with a magnitude of 7.3 in May of that year.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the earthquakes destroyed or damaged more than 800,000 houses, mostly in the western and central districts.
Government buildings, some stretches of roads and the famous historical monuments of the Kathmandu Valley a UNESCO World Heritage Site were destroyed or damaged, and many villages north of Kathmandu were razed to the ground.
With additional reporting from BBC Nepali