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.
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