At least 128 people were killed and dozens injured in Nepal when a strong earthquake struck the western Jajarkot region, officials said on Saturday, as houses in the area collapsed and buildings as far away as New Delhi in neighboring India shook.
The earthquake occurred at 11:47 p.m. (1802 GMT) on Friday with a magnitude of 6.4, Nepal’s National Seismological Center said. The German Geosciences Research Center measured the tremor at 5.7, downgrading it from 6.2, while the US Geological Survey pegged it at 5.6.
The earthquake is the deadliest since 2015, when two earthquakes in the Himalayan country killed about 9,000 people. Entire cities, centuries-old temples and other historic sites were then reduced to rubble, with more than a million homes destroyed, costing the economy $6 billion.
Officials feared the death toll from Friday’s quake could rise as they failed to establish contact in a hilly area near the epicenter, about 500 km (300 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, where tremors were also felt. The district has a population of 190,000 with villages scattered in the remote hills.
“The number of injured could be in the hundreds and the death toll could also rise,” Jajarkot district official Harish Chandra Sharma told Reuters by phone.
Police spokesman Kuber Kadayat said 92 people were killed in Jajarkot and 36 in neighboring Rukum West district, both in Karnali province. The epicenter was in the village of Ramidanda.
At least 85 people were injured in Rukum West and 55 in Jajarkot, an official from the Prime Minister’s Office said, while Sharma said at least 50 people were in hospitals in Jajarkot alone.
Search and rescue have to clear roads blocked by earthquake-triggered landslides to reach the affected areas, police officer Namaraj Bhattarai said.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal flew to the area early Saturday with a 16-member army medical team to oversee search, rescue and relief efforts, his office said.
Posting on social media platform X, Dahal expressed deep grief over the loss of life and property in the earthquake and ordered security agencies to launch immediate rescue and relief operations.
Footage from local media showed crumbling facades of multi-storey brick houses with large pieces of furniture strewn about. Video from X shows people running into the streets as some buildings are evacuated.
“Houses have collapsed. People have rushed out of their homes. I am outside in a crowd of frightened residents. We are trying to find out the details of the damage,” police official Santosh Rokka said over the phone.
