An earthquake in the mountains of west Nepal rocked the Himalayan nation early yesterday, killing at least six people while they were asleep in their houses, a government administrator said.
The earthquake was felt as far away as the Indian capital, New Delhi, about 400km west of the epicenter.
Six people were killed when they were crushed in their houses in a remote, sparsely populated mountain village, Doti District chief officer Kalpana Shrestha said, adding that five people were injured.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The earthquake at 2:12am sent people in the mountain villages panicking out of their houses and many spent the entire night out in the open, Shrestha said.
Security forces have been dispatched to the remote villages to help with the rescue effort, she said.
There were reports of houses damaged in many villages, but no new reports of casualties.
Women in the district were shown sitting in the open with babies wrapped in blankets to shield them from the cold.
Volunteers rescued a cow trapped under the debris.
Ram Upadhyay, chairman of the Purbi Chowki rural municipality in Doti, said he was in a nearby village when the quake struck.
“It shook terribly and I rushed out immediately,” he said. “Now we are collecting details including the dead bodies.”
Videos posted on social media showed villagers moving debris by hand to find the victims buried by the earthquake-damaged houses, shining mobile phone lights to move the piles of wood and stones that most of the mountain villages use to build houses.
Most of the mountain villages are reached on foot and there are no roads to drive heavy equipment to help with the rescue.
Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said in a statement he had ordered government officials to provide immediate help to the victims and their families, and provide all necessary medical assistance to those wounded.
Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.6. The US Geological Survey provided preliminary measurements of magnitude 5.6, with a depth of 15.7km and its epicenter 21km east of Dipayal.
Earthquakes are common in mountainous Nepal, which is home to the world’s tallest mountain. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake in 2015 killed about 9,000 people and damaged about 1 million structures.
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
North Korea blew up sections of roads in its own territory that are part of links once used to connect the southern part of the peninsula with the north, in a show of defiance after it accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang. North Korea detonated bombs north of its eastern and western borders at around noon yesterday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. South Korea’s military later fired off warning shots within its border, said the JCS, which also confirmed there were no reports of damage in South Korea from the detonations. A video released by the South Korean
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
‘PROVOCATION’: Accusing Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang to drop propaganda leaftlets, the North told eight artillery brigades ‘to get fully ready to open fire’ Tensions on the Korean Peninsula rose again after North Korea ordered troops along its southern border to be ready to fire and military leaders in Seoul said Pyongyang might be preparing to blow up roads connecting the two nations. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected efforts under way in North Korea to destroy the eastern and western roads connecting the two nations, warning that an explosion could take place as early as yesterday. That followed North Korea’s announcement last week that it would “completely separate” its territory from the South, blaming Seoul’s joint drills with the US and the