At least 128 people were killed and scores more injured after a powerful quake hit western Nepal, reducing some buildings in Jajarkot to piles of rubble, video filmed on Saturday (November 4) morning showed.
Local officials said it had not been possible to establish contact in the area near the epicenter in Jajarkot, a hilly district with a population of 190,000 and villages scattered in remote hills. Residents of Bheri were seen climbing over piles of bricks, rocks and wood which were once buildings in the village.
The quake occurred at 11:47 p.m. on Friday (November 3) in Jajarkot district of Karnali province. Jajarkot is about 500 km (310 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu. Nepal’s National Seismological Centre said the quake was a magnitude 6.4 but the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) later downgraded the magnitude to 5.7 and the U.S. Geological Survey pegged it as a magnitude 5.6.
The tremors of the earthquake were also felt in several districts of Northern India including, Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
In 2015, about 9,000 people were killed in two earthquakes in Nepal. Whole towns, centuries-old temples and other historic sites were reduced to rubble, with more than a million houses destroyed, at a cost to the economy of $6 billion.
(Inputs from Reuters)