KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A major earthquake hit a remote mountain region of Nepal on Tuesday, killing at least 42 people, triggering landslides and toppling buildings less than three weeks after the Himalayan nation was ravaged by its worst quake in decades.
The magnitude-7.3 quake hit
hardest in districts northeast of the capital and terrified a nation
already shell-shocked and struggling after a more powerful quake on
April 25 killed more
than 8,150 and flattened entire villages, leaving
hundreds of thousands homeless.
Information
was slow to reach Kathmandu after Tuesday's quake, but officials and
aid workers said they expected the death toll to rise. Within a few
hours, the Home Ministry confirmed that at least 42 people had been
killed and at least 1,117 injured.
Meanwhile,
it said rescuers had managed to pull three people to safety in the
capital, while another nine were rescued in the district of Dolkha.
Rescue
helicopters were sent to mountain districts where landslides and
collapsed buildings may have buried people, the government said. Home
Ministry official Laxmi Dhakal said the Sindhupalchowk and Dolkha
districts were the hardest hit.
Search parties fanned out to look for survivors in the wreckage of
collapsed buildings in Sindhulpalchowk's town of Chautara, which has
become a hub for humanitarian aid since the magnitude-7.8 quake on April
25 — Nepal's worst recorded earthquake since 1934.
Tuesday's quake was deeper,
however, coming from a depth of 18.5 kilometers (11.5 miles) versus the
earlier one at 15 kilometers (9.3 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to
cause more damage.
The Tuesday quake was followed closely by at least eight strong aftershocks, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
See BBC News....
The
international airport in Kathmandu, which has become a transport hub
for international aid, was closed briefly after Tuesday's quake, while
traffic snarled in the streets of the capital.
Early
reports indicated at least two buildings had collapsed in Kathmandu,
though at least one had been unoccupied due to damage it sustained
during the April 25 quake. Experts say the April 25 quake caused
extensive structural damage even in buildings that did not topple, and
that many could be in danger of future collapse.
Frightened
residents who had returned to their homes only a few days ago were once
again planning to sleep outdoors in empty fields, parking lots and on
sidewalks Tuesday night.
"The shaking seemed to go on and
on," Rose Foley, a UNICEF official based in Kathmandu, said after the
latest quake. "It felt like being on a boat in rough seas."
Aid agencies were struggling to get reports from outside of the capital.
"We're
thinking about children across the country, and who are already
suffering. This could make them even more vulnerable," Foley said.
Residents
of the small town of Namche Bazaar, about 50 kilometers (35 miles) from
the epicenter of the latest quake and a well-known spot for
high-altitude trekkers, said a couple of buildings damaged in the
earlier earthquake collapsed Tuesday. However, there were no reports of
deaths or injuries in the town.
Meanwhile, new landslides blocked mountain roads in the district of
Gorkha, one of the most damaged regions after the April 25 quake.
"People are terribly scared.
Everyone ran out in the streets because they are afraid of being inside
the houses," Norwegian Red Cross Secretary-General Asne Havnelid told
Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
At Kathmandu's Norvic Hospital, patients and doctors rushed to the parking lot.
"I
thought I was going to die this time," said Sulav Singh, who rushed
with his daughter into a street in the suburban neighborhood of
Thapathali. "Things were just getting back to normal, and we get this
one."
Nepalese have been terrified by dozens of aftershocks that
followed the April 25 quake. The impoverished country has appealed for
billions of dollars in aid from foreign nations, as well as medical
experts to treat the wounded and helicopters to ferry food and temporary
shelters to hundreds of thousands left homeless amid unseasonal rains.
Paul
Dillon, a spokesman with the International Organization for Migration,
said he saw a man in Kathmandu who had apparently run from the shower
with shampoo covering his head. "He was sitting on the ground, crying,"
Dillon said.
Strong shaking was also felt
across northern India, with at least three people killed when rooftops
or walls collapsed on them in the state of Bihar. The state's disaster
management secretary said the deaths occurred in the districts of Patna,
Vaishali and Darbhanga, just across from Nepal's southern border.
The
earth also rattled across the Nepalese border in Tibet's Jilong and
Zhangmu regions, and slight tremors were felt in the Tibetan capital,
Lhasa.
"Rocks fell from the
mountains," Jilong county government vice chief Wang Wenxiang was quoted
as saying by China News Service. "There might be some houses collapsed
or damaged." Authorities were assessing the damage further.