A strong earthquake aftershock struck India and Nepal on Sunday, shaking buildings in New Delhi and triggering more avalanches in the Himalayas.
- Nepal earthquake kills more than 1,900 people
- Nepal earthquake triggers Everest avalanche, killing climbers
- Shallow quakes pack more punch
The United States Geological Survey said the tremor was 6.7 magnitude, less than the 7.9 quake that struck the region on Saturday killing at least 1,900 people.
"Another one, we have an aftershock right now," Indian mountaineer Arjun Vajpai told Reuters by telephone from advanced base camp on Mount Makalu, 20 kilometres from Everest.
People gather near the cracks on the road caused by Saturday's earthquake in Bhaktapur, Nepal. (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
Screams and the sound of an avalanche could be heard over the phone line Vajpai was speaking on. At Everest base camp, Romanian climber Alex Gavan tweeted that the aftershock had set off three avalanches.
U.K. Everest climber Daniel Mazur, who relayed news of Saturday's avalanche near base camp on Saturday, also posted that news on Twitter:
"Aftershock @ 1pm! Horrible here in camp 1. Avalanches on 3 sides. C1 a tiny island. We worry about icefall team below.. Alive?"
Climbers took to Twitter on Saturday to report that the already dangerous Khumbu Icefall route, below Camp 1, had been badly damaged in the avalanche, blamed for the deaths of 10 climbers.
Tens of thousands of Nepalese spent the night under a chilly sky before being jolted awake by a series of aftershocks.
Rescuers aided by international teams, meanwhile, continued to clear rubble in search of survivors as officials counted the number of dead as more than 1,900 across the Himalayan region.
Those victims included at least 721 people in Kathmandu alone, and among the dead were 17 who were struck by a quake-triggered avalanche on Mount Everest that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers at the end of the climbing season.
More than 5,000 in Nepal have been injured as a result of the earthquake, said Home Ministry official Laxmi Dhakal.
Saturday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which originated outside the capital Kathmandu, was the worst to hit the poor South Asian nation in over 80 years. It destroyed the old, historic part of Kathmandu, and was strong enough to be felt all across the northern part of neighbouring India, Bangladesh, China's region of Tibet and Pakistan, where a total of 60 people died.
The quake occurred at the boundary between the two pieces, or plates, of Earth's crust, one of which supports India to the south and the other Eurasia to the north. The Indian plate is moving at 45 millimetres a year under the Eurasian plate, and this results in earthquakes once every 500 years on an average, said Marin Clark, a geophysicist at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
So the quake was "definitely not a surprise," she said. Over millions of years, such quakes have led to the uplift of the Himalayas. Nepal suffered its worst recorded earthquake in 1934, which measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.
The power of Saturday's tremors brought down several buildings in the center of the capital, the ancient Old Kathmandu, including centuries-old temples and towers.
Among them was the nine-story Dharahara Tower, one of Kathmandu's landmarks built by Nepal's royal rulers as a watchtower in the 1800s and a UNESCO-recognized historical monument. It was reduced to rubble and there were reports of people trapped underneath.
The head of the UN cultural agency, Irina Bokova, said in a statement that UNESCO was ready to help Nepal rebuild from "extensive damage, including to historic monuments and buildings of the Kathmandu Valley."
A man walks along damaged houses in Bhaktapur, Nepal on Sunday, a day after a powerful earthquake killed at least 1,900 people. (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
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