A Nepalese woman injured in an earthquake rests at Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal.Thousands of fear-stricken people spent the night outdoors after a new earthquake killed dozens of people in Nepal, a country still recovering from a devastating quake that killed more than 8,000 nearly three weeks ago.
A U.S. Marine Corps helicopter carrying six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers was reported missing while delivering disaster aid in northeastern Nepal, though there have been no signs the aircraft crashed, U.S. officials said.
Home ministry official Laxmi Dhakal said today that army helicopters were searching the Sunkhani area, nearly 80 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu, for the missing helicopter.
Tuesday’s magnitude-7.3 quake, centered between Kathmandu and Mount Everest, struck hardest in the foothills of the Himalayas. It triggered landslides that blocked roads to remote villages in several districts. Most of the 65 people confirmed dead by Wednesday morning were located northeast of Kathmandu, the district’s chief administrator Prem Lal Lamichane said.
“People are terrorised. They spent the night out in the open,” Lamichane said, adding the administration was running out of relief material.
He asked the government to send more helicopters and supplies, and said there were many injured people stranded in villages.
Tuesday’s quake also left nearly 2,000 injured, according to the Home Ministry’s latest count. But according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that toll was expected to rise, as reports trickled in of people in isolated Himalayan towns and villages being buried under rubble.
Tremors radiated across parts of Asia. In neighboring India, at least 16 people were confirmed dead after rooftops or walls collapsed onto them, according to India’s Home Ministry. Chinese media reported one death in Tibet.