NEW DELHI: An earthquake rocked northern India’s remote and impoverished Himalayan mountain region, killing over 1,000 people and injuring more than 1,500 as homes and buildings collapsed and some villages were buried under landslides, according to reports from the area.
Details about the extent of damage were sparse, because the reason worst hit by the quake lies in isolated mountains near the Indo-Chinese border, where paved roads are few and communications difficult even in normal times.
The moderately strong quake, which seismologists in New Delhi said measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, struck just before 3 a.m. Sunday and lasted 45 seconds. It was felt across northern India, including in New Delhi, and as far away as Jammu, 355 miles north-west of the epicenter.
Officials said the epicenter was in Almora, a hill station about 30 miles west of the Nepalese border, in the Uttarkashi district of Uttar Pradesh state.
The region, near the border of India, China and Nepal, is rugged, lightly populated and poor, with most residents eking out subsidence by farming on terraced plots carved into steep mountain slopes. Hospitals are few and far between.
The Associated Press, quoting authorities in Dehra Dun, a city in northern Uttar Pradesh stale near the epicenter, said that at least 341 people were confirmed dead.
Officials feared that the death toll could rise above 500 as relief workers reach badly hit villages.
At least 500 people were feared trapped in the rubble of buildings that collapsed when the quake struck, Dehra Dun District Magistrate Shishir Priya Darshi said.
AS many as 400 villages were affected, they said. Deaths and injuries in neighboring low-lying distinct were considerably fewer, the officials said.
One Uttar Pradesh official told United News of India in the state capital of Luck now that a large dam and power station in Uttar kashi had been damaged by the temblor, although the extent of the problem was not known, Electricity and other utilizes were disrupted in the region for most of the day.
Army and paramilitary troops were sent to Uttar kashi and the Chamoli district east of Uttar kashi. Four helicopters were to fly in emergency supplies of rice, wheat and Sugar and to start evacuating the injured. Darshi said.
The official’s m Dehra Dun said police and rescuers were hampered by big landslides in the mountainous region, which can only be reached by tortuous and narrow roads.
Several aftershocks were reported throughout the morning and Carly afternoon that day, and some were felt as far away as the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, about 300 miles from Uttar kashi.
In Nepal, chief Govt seismologist M.R Pandey said about 16aftershocks were felt in the western region of the neighboring country, but there were no immediate casually reports. He said none of the aftershocks measured more than 3.5 on the Richter scale. Police said there were fears of flooding farther south.
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