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 A Reuters correspondent flew on a Nepali military helicopter along
the Tamakoshi river that runs by the town of Charikot, in the
mountainous Dolakha district worst hit by Tuesday's 7.3 magnitude
quake that killed nearly 100 people.
The river winds through rugged Himalayan terrain in an area whose
tallest peak soars over 7,000 meters (23,000 ft). Hillsides are
cloaked with dense forest that would make it hard to sight the
chopper that went missing after the crew was heard over the radio
saying the aircraft had a fuel problem.
In Koshikhet village, a U.S. civilian team was using a drone to
search for the missing Marine Corps UH-1Y, or Huey as the model is
better known, which was carrying six Marines and two Nepali
soldiers.
"We are using infrared vision to look for hotspots and any signs of
life," said drone operator Shepherd Eaton, from GlobalMedic, a U.S.
aid agency that specializes in search and rescue.
 The search, involving U.S., Indian and Nepali military choppers and
a battalion of 400 Nepali soldiers, has been joined by two MV-22B
Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft capable of taking off and landing
vertically.
So far, no sign has been found of the Huey, which was on an aid
mission in Dolakha district near Tibet when it lost contact on
Tuesday.
"We are still trying to locate it. There is no evidence to prove
that it has crashed," said Marines spokeswoman Captain Cassandra
Gesecki.
The Huey was kitted out with a satellite location device, a radio
and an emergency beacon. It may have come down in a "dead zone" for
radio signals, though, making it hard for searchers to locate it.
"If it just landed in that forest, it would be lost," said Bala
Nanda Sharma, a retired Nepali army general, gesturing to a hillside
from the Charikot army base from which helicopters were flying.
The death toll from Tuesday's tremor reached 91, Nepal's home
ministry said on Thursday.
Another 2,428 people were injured in the quake, which struck 17 days
after a huge earthquake killed more than 8,000 people and damaged or
destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings in the impoverished
Himalayan nation.
SECOND QUAKE ADDS TO PAIN
Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, visiting Dolakha district, said
massive landslides made relief work difficult. "Still, we are
fighting," he said.
Koirala gave up his seat on his helicopter so that a woman with
critical head injuries could be evacuated from Charikot to
Kathmandu. He only flew back to the capital when it returned.
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Medecins Sans Frontieres emergency coordinator Dan Sermand said
Tuesday's tremors caused serious damage to buildings in remote areas
that had already been weakened.
"The first has done quite some damage. The second has finished the
job," Sermand said by telephone from Kathmandu.
MSF deployed two helicopters, each with two medical teams, to
Dolakha to stabilize and evacuate the injured. Civilian helicopters
were not asked to join the search for the missing U.S. chopper.
Home Ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dahal told Reuters on Wednesday
he feared the search was diverting resources from relief and rescue
operations.
Relief workers and aid were only slowly reaching remote areas, where
many roads have been cut by landslides - including the single-track
road along the Tamakoshi river where no moving vehicles could be
seen from the air.
In Mabu village, the Nepali search helicopter stopped to find out if
the locals there had any information about the missing helicopter.
"You are the only person we have seen so far," said Bhagawat Gurung,
18, a villager, when asked whether any aid workers had reached them.
Tuesday's earthquake, which was followed by several aftershocks,
struck as Nepalis were coming to terms with the devastation from
last month's 7.8 quake, which packed a punch more than five times
greater and was centered west of Kathmandu.
(Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma and Tommy Wilkes in KATHMANDU
and Douglas Busvine and Rupam Jain Nair in NEW DELHI; Writing by
Paritosh Bansal and Douglas Busvine; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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