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| Army personnel carry an injured person on a stretcher after an earthquake in Jajarkot, Nepal, November 4, 2023. |
KATHMANDU, Nov 4: A powerful earthquake struck Nepal’s western Jajarkot region, killing at least 128 people and injuring dozens, officials said Saturday, as homes collapsed in the area and neighboring India Buildings up to New Delhi shook.
Security forces have been deployed to help rescue efforts in the rugged districts of Jajarkot and western Rukum, 500 km (310 miles) west of Kathmandu.
Strong tremors were also felt in the capital of Nepal and cities of neighboring India including Delhi.
Army spokesperson said that more than 128 people have been injured. Jajarkot Hospital is full of injured.
“Many houses have collapsed; many others have cracks,” Sharma said. Thousands of residents spent the entire night in cold, open fields because they were too afraid to go into damaged homes due to the aftershocks. ” “I couldn’t get in.”
Three more aftershocks were felt within an hour of the earthquake and many people spent the rest of the night in the open for fear of further earthquakes and damage to their homes.
Video footage on local media showed collapsed portions of multi-story brick buildings. Posts on social media depicted people digging through debris in the dark to pull survivors from the remains of collapsed buildings.
Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal reached the affected area on Saturday after expressing deep grief over the loss of life and property caused by the earthquake on social media platform X. He said he has ordered security agencies to immediately begin rescue and relief. operations.
But search and rescue operations are being hampered as roads are blocked due to landslides caused by the earthquake.
Jajarkot district police chief Suresh Sunar told Reuters news agency that it was difficult to get a complete picture of what happened.
“I am outside myself. We are collecting details, but due to cold and darkness it is difficult to get information from remote areas,” Mr Sunar told the media.
According to Nepal’s monitoring and research center, the earthquake was recorded at 23:47 local time (18:02 GMT).
The earthquake is the deadliest since 2015 when two earthquakes killed nearly 9,000 people in the Himalayan country. Entire towns, centuries-old temples, and other historical sites were reduced to rubble, and more than one million homes were destroyed, costing the economy $6 billion.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the earthquake’s magnitude at 5.6 and said it was a shallow earthquake, meaning it occurred close to the Earth’s surface.
Nepal is located along the Himalayas, where a lot of seismic activity occurs.
Last month, an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude was recorded in the western district of Bajhang, resulting in injuries to people.
In 2015, the country was hit by two devastating earthquakes that killed 9,000 people and injured 22,309.
The first was a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on April 25, 2015, which caused most of the damage and loss of life. This was followed by a large number of aftershocks, including a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in May of that year.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the earthquake destroyed or damaged more than 800,000 homes, mainly in the western and central districts.
Government buildings, parts of roads, and the famous historical monuments of the Kathmandu Valley—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—were destroyed or damaged, with several villages north of Kathmandu devastated.
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