Five persons were killed and another 44 injured as a strong tremor rocked eastern and central Nepal on Sunday sending panic across the country.
Three persons were killed when the compound wall of the British Embassy fell over them at Kapurdhara Marga of Lainchour while two others lost their lives when a wall of a house collapsed in Dharan-13, Furse due to the earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and had its epicenter on the Taplejung-Sikkim (India) border.
Sajan Shrestha, 36, and his eight-year-old daughter Anisha of Ghurmichour-6 Gorkha, residing in Samakhusi Town Planning and Bir Bahadur Majhi, 19, were crushed to death by the British Embassy wall.
Sajan, a security guard with DANIDA, and his daughter were riding a scooter (Ba 9 pa 2646) while Majhi was walking on the sidewalk when embassy wall collapsed.
“I saw the wall fall and ran to rescue them. Their head was buried under the rubble and I, with help from passers-by, pulled them out and rushed them to Manmohan Memorial Hospital,” Gyanendra Ghimire, a Nepal Army soldier, told Republica. Majhi was also later rushed to the hospital and all three were declared dead on arrival.
A car was also crushed by the wall but the driver Binay Shrestha got out of the crushed car and went to the the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital for treatment. He has sustained serious leg injuries while one Januka of Dhapasi injured her waist while jumping off the first floor of her house.
Similarly, Santosh Pariyar, 20, of Katunje, Okhaldhunga and his seven-year-old nephew Bimal Pariyar died on the spot when an old cottage they had been renting was crushed by the wall of the landlord’s house in Dharan-13. Bimal’s father is a tailor with the school department of Kalibaksha Battalion of Nepal Army.
The Natural Disaster Management Division of the Home Ministry said a total of 44 persons were injured across the country, including 32 in Kathmandu.
Binay Shrestha has sustained “Altogether 58 houses were destroyed in the country with 36 in the eastern region, 10 in Kathmandu and 12 in the rest of central region,” said chief of the Natural Disaster Disaster Management Division Shankar Koirala.
Powerful tremors were felt across a wide region, including Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Indian cities of Guwahati and Kolkata, and even as far away as the Indian capital New Delhi.
In Nepal, police said three people were killed, including a motorcyclist and his eight-year-old daughter, when a wall collapsed at the British Embassy compound in the capital Kathmandu, 270 kilometres west of the epicentre.
"Another two died in a separate incident in eastern Nepal," police spokesman Binod Singh said.
A budget debate in Nepal's parliament was stalled for 15 minutes while MPs leapt to their feet and fled the chamber as the entire building shook.
Telephone landlines to Sikkim, India's least populous state, were knocked out and mobile networks were swamped, making communication with the affected area difficult.
The quake was followed by two strong aftershocks, one with a magnitude of 6.1.
Sikkim Chief Secretary Karma Gyatso said five people had been killed and 60 injured in and around Gangtok as the result of mudslides, building collapses and falling debris.
Another person was reported killed in a stampede by panicked residents in a town in the eastern state of Bihar.
Manish Sharma, a doctor attending a conference in Gangtok, told another TV news channel that guests in his hotel had all run for the doors as soon as the first tremors were felt.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called an emergency meeting of the National Disaster Management Authority, and Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth said air force planes carrying rescue teams and relief supplies had been dispatched to Sikkim.
Strong tremors were felt in Guwahati, the main city in Assam state, some 600 kilometres away, sending panicked residents running into the streets.
In Kathmandu, traffic came to a standstill as hotels and bars were evacuated.
Hundreds of anxious tourists and residents waited for news in car parks and on the streets as the seasonal monsoon rain lashed down.
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