A strong earthquake hit Kyrgyzstan, killing at least 70 people, mainly in a remote village near the border with China, that rescuers were racing to reach, officials said yesterday.
The quake late on Sunday, which had a magnitude of 6.6 according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), flattened the village of Nura in the isolated Alaisky district on the mountainous border.
“The current number of dead has reached 65 people,” the Kyrgyz Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the quake had flattened 120 of the 428 houses in the village high in the mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan.
Emergency Situations Minister Kamchybek Tashiyev told journalists that more than 100 people “were injured to various degrees.”
The quake was felt as far away as the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, some 900km from Nura.
“The picture we saw was frightening. The village of Nura is fully destroyed, 100 percent. There are many injured. So far we have counted 60 dead. All of them are local residents,” Tashiyev said, before his ministry updated the toll.
Victims were being ferried by helicopter from Nura — a village of some 960 residents — to the main regional city of Osh, 220km away.
“The helicopter will make as many flights as needed to transport wounded people needing medical attention to the regional center,” Tashiyev said.
Rescue efforts were being hampered by the remoteness of the village and a lack of telephone links with it, while roads had become impassable in some places due to the quake, officials said.
“Efforts to assist the victims are being complicated by the distance of the villages ... from hospitals, by a lack of communications and by the destruction of the roads,” said health ministry official Dinara Sagynbayeva.
USGS said the epicenter of the earthquake was 60km east-southeast of Sary-Tash at a depth of 27.6km.
An aftershock of magnitude 5.1 hit the region just over two hours later, the USGS said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offered his condolences in a telegram to his Kyrgyz counterpart Kurmanbek Bakiyev and ordered Russian rescuers to assist the relief effort.
Medvedev is due to visit Kyrgyzstan on Thursday for a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a grouping of former Soviet republics.
The meeting would go ahead on schedule despite the quake, Bakiyev’s office said.
Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked and mountainous nation of five million people, is one of the poorest states of the former Soviet Union and lies in a seismically active region.
In February 2003, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in northwest China, with an epicenter close to Kyrgyzstan in the foothills of the Tianshan Mountains, claimed 268 lives and razed 20,000 houses.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their