The death toll from Nepal’s devastating earthquake could reach 10,000, the prime minister yesterday said, as residents frustrated by the government’s slow response used their bare hands to dig for signs of their loved ones.
“The government is doing all it can for rescue and relief on a war footing,” Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said. “It is a challenge and a very difficult hour for Nepal.”
International aid has finally begun arriving in the Himalayan nation of 28 million people, three days after Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, but disbursement is slow. According to the Nepali Ministry of Home Affairs, the confirmed death toll stands at 4,349, with 8,174 injured.
Photo: Reuters
“The death toll could go up to 10,000 because information from remote villages hit by the earthquake is yet to come in,” Koirala said.
The UN said 8 million people were affected by the quake and that 1.4 million people were in need of food.
Meanwhile, up to 250 people were missing yesterday after an avalanche hit the village of Ghodatabela in a popular trekking area to the north of Kathmandu at about noon, Rasuwa District Governor Uddhav Bhattarai said.
Photo: AFP
“This area is in a natural park which is popular with tourists. We are trying to rescue them, but bad weather and rainfall is hampering efforts,” Bhattarai said.
A series of aftershocks, severe damage from the quake, creaking infrastructure and a lack of funds have slowed rescue efforts.
In Kathmandu, youths and relatives of victims were digging into the ruins of destroyed buildings and landmarks.
Photo: EPA
“Waiting for help is more torturous than doing this ourselves,” said Pradip Subba, searching for the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law in the debris of the Dharahara Tower.
“Our hands are the only machine right now,” said the 27-year-old, part of a group of locals pulling out bricks and blocks of concrete with cloth masks over their faces to ward off the stench of rotting bodies. “There is just no one from the government or the army to help us.”
Heavy rain later yesterday slowed down the rescue work.
The head of India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), one of the first foreign organizations to arrive to help, said finding survivors and the bodies of the dead would take time.
NDRF Director General O.P. Singh said heavy equipment could not fit through many of the narrow streets of Kathmandu.
“You have to remove all this rubble, so that will take a lot of time ... I think it’s going to take weeks,” he told Indian television channel NDTV late on Monday.
“The big challenge is relief,” Nepalese Chief Secretary Leela Mani Paudel, the nation’s top bureaucrat, said. “We urge foreign countries to give us special relief materials and medical teams. We are really desperate for more foreign expertise to pull through this crisis.”
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