Struggle to reach victims as quake death toll mounts

Heavy rains slowed the relief effort and made conditions miserable for many homeless villagers as they prepared to spend the night outside.

Three emergency workers were killed in the frantic rescue effort, Indian Home Secretary RK Singh said.

More than 6,000 army and paramilitary troops were working to clear concrete slabs, bricks and mud to rescue scores of people trapped under houses that collapsed when the 6.9-magnitude quake struck the Himalayan region yesterday evening.

Nine helicopters dropped food to villages, airlifted a medical team, moved the injured to safety and conducted damage assessments, Mr Singh said. Heavy construction equipment was used to clear some of the blocked roads, he said.

“The rescue and relief operations are in full swing though they were hampered ... by poor weather,” Mr Singh said.

By midday yesterday, workers had managed to clear mudslides from one lane of the main highway leading to the Indian state of Sikkim, where the quake was centred near the Nepal border, Mr Singh said.

An initial convoy of 75 paramilitary soldiers started moving toward Mangan, the village closest to the epicentre, but still had not arrived by evening.

At least 32 people died and 100 others were injured in Sikkim, Mr Singh said. At least 10 of them worked for the same hydroelectric project, but it was not immediately clear how they died.

Seven other people were killed in the neighbouring Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal, Mr Singh said.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported seven deaths and 24 injuries in Tibet. It said the quake triggered hundreds of landslides that disrupted power and water supplies.

Nepal’s government said seven people died there, including two men and a child who were killed when a brick wall toppled outside the British Embassy in the capital, Kathmandu. Nearly 70 people were injured, some of them seriously, and were in hospitals across Nepal.

Most of the deaths in India occurred when houses, already weakened from recent monsoon rains, collapsed through the force of the quake. More than 100,000 homes were damaged in Sikkim state alone, state officials said.

Mr Singh said it was still unclear what the final toll might be.

“There may still be villages where people are trapped under collapsed houses that we have not been able to reach,” he said.