Nepal quake death toll tops 4,000; villages plead for aid

KATHMANDU, Nepal As the death toll from Nepal’s devastating earthquake climbed past 4,000, aid workers and officials in remote, shattered villages near the epicenter pleaded Monday for food, shelter and medicine.

Help poured in after Saturday’s magnitude-7.8 quake, with countries large and small sending medical and rescue teams, aircraft and basic supplies. The small airport in the capital of Kathmandu was congested and chaotic, with some flights forced to turn back early in the day.

Buildings in parts of the city were reduced to rubble, and there were shortages of food, fuel, electricity and shelter. As bodies were recovered, relatives cremated the dead along the Bagmati River, and at least a dozen pyres burned late into the night.

Conditions were far worse in the countryside, with rescue workers still struggling to reach mountain villages two days after the earthquake.

Some roads and trails to the Gorkha district, where the quake was centered, were blocked by landslides – but also by traffic jams that regularly clog the route north of Kathmandu.

“There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I’ve had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed,” said Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha region.

World Vision aid worker Matt Darvas arrived in the district in the afternoon and said almost no assistance had reached there ahead of him.

Newer concrete buildings were intact, Darvas said, but some villages were reported to be devastated. He cited a “disturbing” report from the village of Singla, where up to 75 percent of the buildings may have collapsed and there has been no contact since Saturday night.

In the villages that have been reached, World Vision said the greatest needs were for search-and-rescue teams, food, blankets, tarps and medical treatment.

Timalsina said 223 people had been confirmed dead in Gorkha district but he presumed “the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured.”

He said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, a clearly exhausted army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.

“We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue,” he said. “We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives.”

Nepal’s Home Ministry said the country’s death toll had risen to 4,010. Another 61 were killed in neighboring India, and China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported 25 dead in Tibet. At least 18 of the dead were killed at Mount Everest as the quake unleashed an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts.

At least 7,180 people were injured in the quake, police said. Tens of thousands are estimated to be left homeless.

Rescue workers and medical teams from at least a dozen countries were helping police and army troops in Kathmandu and surrounding areas, said Maj. Gen. Binod Basnyat, a Nepal army spokesman. Contributions came from large countries like India and China – but also from Nepal’s tiny Himalayan neighbor of Bhutan, which dispatched a medical team.

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