Search and rescue operations continued in Nepal on Saturday after a powerful midnight earthquake in the country’s west killed more than 130 people and left hundreds injured, government officials said.
Rescuers were working to push through roads blocked by landslides and debris to reach the mountainous villages where the earthquake struck. Officials cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise as communication was restored with areas that had been cut off.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the magnitude as 5.6. Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center reported the magnitude at 6.4, with several small aftershocks spread over the following hours. It is not uncommon for estimates of an earthquake’s magnitude to differ or for them to be subsequently revised.
The earthquake hit near midnight, when people were sleeping. Tremors were also felt in India’s capital, New Delhi, hundreds of miles west.
After the initial quake, families in villages spent much of the night out under the open sky, fearing aftershocks.
In the district of Jajarkot, which was at the epicenter of the earthquake approximately 310 miles west of Kathmandu, the capital city, the reported death toll was 95, and around 500 individuals had suffered injuries, as confirmed by Harishchandra Sharma, a senior official in the local administration. It was noted that numerous homes in the district had been damaged, and social media videos depicted houses reduced to piles of bricks with collapsed roofs. Search and rescue operations
Mr. Sharma expressed that there were still areas from which they had not yet received information due to disruptions in the telephone network. He added, “The death toll is expected to increase.”
In another district affected by the earthquake, Rukum West, officials verified 38 fatalities and reported that more than 100 people had been injured.