The bodies were recovered on Saturday and Sunday at the Langtang
village, 60 kilometers(40 miles) north of Kathmandu, which is on a
trekking route popular with Westerners. The entire village, which
includes 55 guesthouses for trekkers, was wiped out by the
avalanche, officials said.
"Local volunteers and police personnel are digging through six-feet
(deep) snow with shovels looking for more bodies," said
Gautam Rimal, assistant chief district officer in the area where
Langtang is located.
The dead include at least 7 foreigners but only two had been
identified, he said.
It was not clear how many people were in Langtang at the time of the
avalanche but other officials said about 120 more people could be
buried under the snow.
"We had not been able to reach the area earlier because of rains and
cloudy weather," Uddhav Bhattarai, the district's senior bureaucrat,
said by telephone on Sunday.
The April 25 earthquake has killed 7,276 people and wounded over
14,300, Nepal's government said.
At least 18 of the deaths were on Mount Everest, where avalanches
hit the slopes of the world's highest peak. The government said on
Monday that it had not closed the mountain to climbers, although the
route up to the peak was damaged.
"Climbers at base camp don't think the route will be fixed anytime
soon," said Tulsi Prasad Gautam, a senior official at Nepal's
tourism department. "It's up to the climbers and the organizers who
are at base camp to take a decision: we are not asking them to do
one thing or another."
Climbers pay $11,000 each to climb Everest, and 357 were registered
for this climbing season. Last year, the government extended permits
when teams abandoned their expeditions after an avalanche killed 16
Sherpa mountain guides.
Gautam, who said last Thursday that a team could repair the route
through the treacherous Khumbu icefalls in a week, said on Monday
that small tremors were still being felt on Everest.
Last week, climbing firm Himalayan Experience decided to abandon its
ascent, becoming the last big team to do so.
[to top of second column] |
MIRACULOUS SURVIVORS
In other parts of the Himalayan nation, three people were pulled
alive from the rubble of their home on Sunday, eight days after the
earthquake, while several media outlets reported that a 101-year-old
man was found alive in the rubble on Saturday.
U.S. military aircraft and personnel arrived in Nepal on Sunday and
were due to begin helping ferry relief supplies to stricken areas
outside the capital, a U.S. Marines spokeswoman said.
The contingent comprised eight aircraft, including one Huey and two
C-130s, and between 100 and 120 personnel, spokeswoman Captain
Cassandra Gesecki said.
The deployment is expected to ease the piling up of relief material
at Kathmandu airport, Nepal's only major airport.
The United Nations said it is looking at a wider array of options
for getting supplies to people in the most remote areas, including
transporting provisions on the ground through India.
"We are still having problems getting things to people," said Orla
Fagan, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs. "There are people in very, very remote
mountain villages."
On Sunday, the government restricted the landing of large cargo
aircraft at the airport to limit damage to the stressed runway, said
a U.N. official who declined to be named.
The United Nations has said 8 million of Nepal's 28 million people
were affected by the quake, with at least 2 million needing tents,
water, food and medicines over the next three months.
(Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Rachel Armstrong)
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