Aid arrives as Nepal quake toll tops 3,300

By Hannah Edensor

International rescue teams and relief supplies have begun arriving in Nepal’s devastated capital to help terrified and homeless survivors of a quake that has killed more than 3,200 people in the impoverished nation.

Equipped with heavy cutting gear and accompanied by sniffer dogs, rescue teams are landing around the clock at the country’s only international airport on the outskirts of Kathmandu, the normally-vibrant capital which has been devastated by Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude quake.

Officials say more than 3,300 people are now known to have died, including 3,218 in Nepal – making it the quake-prone Himalayan nation’s deadliest disaster in more than 80 years.

Around 90 people have been killed in neighbouring countries, including at least 67 in India and 20 in China.

The quake also triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest which buried part of base camp and killed at least 18 people.

Aftershocks triggered fresh avalanches there on Sunday even as helicopters evacuated some of those worst injured the day before.

Hundreds of foreign mountaineers had gathered at the world’s highest mountain at the start of the annual climbing season, and the real scale of the disaster there has been impossible to evaluate with communications all but cut off.

With much of Kathmandu in ruins, tens of thousands of residents spent Sunday night on the streets, in tents fashioned from plastic sheeting that did little to protect them from heavy rains.

“We don’t have a choice, our house is shaky. The rain is seeping in but what can we do?,” said 34-year-old shopkeeper Rabi Shrestha as he camped out on the roadside.

The situation has been exacerbated by power cuts and the country’s cell phone network is at breaking point.

The Nepalese government says it is stepping up efforts to help remote areas closer to the epicentre of the quake.

“Our focus is on rescue,” home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal said. “In far-flung areas, a larger helicopter will be stationed in the regional headquarters and smaller ones will shuttle with survivors.”

Announcing the latest death toll in Nepal, a top disaster official said emergency crews would also step up efforts to rescue those trapped in high-rise buildings which pancaked on Saturday.

“Our efforts will also be focused on finding survivors in areas where big buildings have collapsed,” said Rameshwor Dangal, who heads the home ministry’s national disaster management division.

Nepalese rescuers are being joined by hundreds of foreign aid workers from countries such as China, India and the US.

The European Commission has released 3 million euros ($A4.17 million) in emergency aid for Nepal which will help fund clean water, medicine, emergency shelter and telecommunications in the worst-affected areas.

Nepal and the rest of the Himalayas, where the Indian and Eurasia tectonic plates collide, are prone to earthquakes.

An 6.8 magnitude quake hit eastern Nepal in August 1988 killing 721 people, and a magnitude 8.1 quake killed 10,700 people in Nepal and India in 1934.

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