Toll mounts as Nepal searches for earthquake survivors

Rescuers in Nepal are searching for survivors of a magnitude 7.8 quake that killed nearly 2,000, including 17 on Everest, digging through rubble in the devastated capital, Kathmandu.Residents of Kathmandu were jolted by a fresh magnitude 6.7 aftershocks on Sunday that compounded the worst disaster to hit the Himalayan nation in more than 80 years.Overnight tremors had forced residents to spend the night trying to sleep out on the streets and open ground in makeshift tents.Aftershocks were also reported in New Delhi, the capital of neighbouring India, where the earthquake killed at least 50 people in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.Relief agencies have already warned that as many as six million people might be affected in Nepal by Saturday’s disaster.Hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley, the quake-affected region with 2.5 million people, were overcrowded, running out of emergency supplies and space to store corpses, the UN said in a statement.At overstretched hospitals, where medics were also treating patients in hastily erected tents, staff were forced to flee from buildings for fear of further collapses.There was a little more order on Sunday as rescue teams fanned out across Kathmandu.International aid groups and governments have sent emergency crews to reinforce those trying to find survivors in Kathmandu, and in rural areas cut off by blocked roads and patchy phone networks.The Red Cross said it was concerned about the fate of rural villages close to the epicentre of the quake northwest of Kathmandu.“Roads have been damaged or blocked by landslides and communication lines are down preventing us from reaching local Red Cross branches to get accurate information,” Jagan Chapagain, Red Cross Asia Pacific director, said.