2023-11-04 09:19:00
At least 132 people died in an earthquake that shook a remote region of Nepal, where relief efforts are being organized to search for survivors, according to a new report on Saturday from the Nepalese authorities. The 5.6 magnitude earthquake was measured at a depth of 18 km, according to the USGS. It hit the far western Himalayan country late Friday evening. Its epicenter was located 42 km south of Jumla, not far from the border with Tibet.
“92 people died in Jajarkot and 40 in Rukum,” Interior Ministry spokesperson Narayan Prasad Bhattarai told AFP, citing the two districts at this stage most affected by the earthquake, located in south of the epicenter in the border province of Karnali. More than 100 injured were counted in these two districts, said Nepalese police spokesperson Kuber Kathayat.
Difficult access for emergency services
Nepali security forces have been widely deployed in earthquake-hit areas to assist in relief operations, according to Karnali provincial police spokesperson Gopal Chandra Bhattarai. “The isolation of the districts makes it difficult to transmit information,” he added. “Some roads are blocked due to the damage, but we are trying to reach the area through other routes. » In Jajarkot, the sector hospital was stormed by residents transporting injured people there.
Videos and photos posted on social media show residents digging through rubble in the dark to extract survivors from collapsed buildings. We see destroyed or damaged mud houses and survivors outside to protect themselves from possible further collapses, while the sirens of emergency vehicles wail.
On a major geological fault
Moderate tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi, the capital of India located nearly 500 km from the epicenter. Earthquakes are common in Nepal, which lies on a major geological fault where the Indian tectonic plate pushes into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayan range. The tremor was followed several hours later by aftershocks of magnitude 4 in the same area, according to the USGS.
Nearly 9,000 people died in 2015 when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, destroying more than half a million homes and 8,000 schools. Hundreds of monuments and royal palaces – including sites in the Kathmandu Valley, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracting tourists from all over the world – had suffered irreversible damage, striking a blow to Nepalese tourism. In November 2022, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake killed six people in Doti district, near Jajarkot.
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