Search and rescue efforts after an earthquake in Nepal wrapped up yesterday as the focus shifted to providing relief to survivors awaiting food and shelter, officials said 36 hours after the disaster struck.
At least 157 people were killed in isolated western districts of the Himalayan country when a magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit late on Friday.
Many survivors spent the night under the open sky, their mud houses reduced to piles of rubble.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Several people died in the village of Nalgad, in the worst-hit Jajarkot district, where Mahesh Chanare prepared to cremate his father-in-law yesterday.
“The rest of my family is safe,” the 34-year-old plumber said.
“But the houses have buried everything with them, there is hardly anything to eat,” he added. “No relief materials have reached us. People here desperately need food and tents.”
Altogether 105 people died in Jajarkot and another 52 in neighboring Rukum district, officials said that search and rescue operations had been concluded. “We are in touch with all areas and rescue operations have wrapped up,” said provincial police spokesman Gopal Chandra Bhattarai. “But we are still on alert as this is a remote area and there might be some isolated areas from where information has not flowed.”
Harish Chandra Sharma, a Jajarkot district official, said the focus was now on providing relief to the victims.
“It has been a tough night and we are trying to get relief materials to those affected by the quake,” Sharma said. “Some have been distributed but we need to reach all areas.”
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS