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Words from the lunatic fringe: Rahul Gandhi ate beef, visited temple and caused earthquake, says Sakshi Maharaj

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Sakshi Maharaj

New Delhi: Well-known for his controversial remarks, BJP leader Sakshi Maharaj has made heads turn again by stating that Rahul Gandhi’s ‘impure’ visit to Kedarnath has led to the disastrous earthquake in Nepal.

Sakshi Maharaj stated that Rahul Gandhi ate beef and visited Kedarnath without ‘purifying’ himself and hence, the earthquake took place, according to a report published in The Times Of India.

Reacting to Sakshi Maharaj’s insensitive remark, Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev has asked the Modi government to take immediate action against their party member.

The Nepal quake has claimed nearly 4300 lives till date, as per reports. The stranded people in Nepal, filled with grief and fear, are spending nights out on streets.

Relief and rescue operations are on and countries across the globe are stepping forward to their bit for the quake victims.

(Agencies)

Nepal quake toll could reach 10,000, govt on 'war footing' – Nepal PM

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nepal

Katmandu: The death toll in Nepal’s earthquake could reach 10,000, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala told reporters on Tuesday, ordering intensified rescue efforts and appealing for foreign supplies of tents and medicines.

“The government is doing all it can for rescue and relief on a war footing,” Koirala said in an interview. “It is a challenge and a very difficult hour for Nepal.”

A home ministry official put the latest death toll at 4,349. If the death toll does reach 10,000, that would be even higher than the 8,500 killed in a massive 1934 quake, the Himalayan nation’s worst disaster to date.

Koirala was abroad when the 7.9 magnitude quake struck on Saturday. He returned on Sunday. He has issued orders to his government to improve coordination of the relief effort and will address the nation later on Tuesday, an aide said.

Appealing for foreign assistance, Koirala said Nepal needed tents and medicines. Many people are sleeping out of doors because their homes have been destroyed or may not withstand the dozens of aftershocks that have hit the country, he said.

“The government needs tents, much medicine. People are sleeping in fields and rains,” he said. “There are more than 7,000 people injured. Their treatment and rehabilitation is going to be a big challenge.”

(Agencies)

Thirty-eight Indian cities in high risk earthquakes zones

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Representational image

Representational image

New Delhi: At least 38 Indian cities lie in high-risk seismic zones and nearly 60 percent of the subcontinental landmass is vulnerable to earthquakes. Barring rare exceptions, such as the Delhi Metro, India’s hastily-built cities are open to great damage from earthquakes.

The earthquake that devastated Nepal on saturday and jolted northern India, damaging buildings as far apart as Agra and Siliguri, was expected by geologists, who have warned of more Himalayan earthquakes caused by the growing pressures of the sub-continent grinding into the Asian mainland.

Very few buildings in India meet the standards prescribed in “Indian Standards Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design” – first published by the Bureau of Indian Standards in 1962, the latest revision being in 2005. These are not enforced, so almost no one knows such earthquake-resistant standards and guidelines for home-owners exist.

The Delhi Metro is one of the few Indian structures built to withstand a quake. Many of the houses built in Bhuj after the Gujarat quake of 2001 are now earthquake-resistant. The rare building and high-rise may be designed for quakes.

But nothing has changed since 1993, when a relatively milder earthquake of magnitude 6.4 in Maharashtra’s Latur district killed nearly 10,000 people in what was considered a non-seismic zone. Most died because shoddily constructed houses collapsed at the first major shake, as they did in Gujarat eight years later.

The government of India today lists 38 cities in moderate to high-risk seismic zones. “Typically, the majority of the constructions in these cities are not earthquake-resistant,” notes a 2006 report written by the United Nations for the ministry of home affairs. “Therefore in the event of an earthquake, one of these cities would become a major disaster.”

The earth’s landmasses ride like gigantic rafts on “plates”, or sections of the earth’s outermost layer, the crust. These plates frequently slip and slide, causing earthquakes. We don’t feel the small ones. The big ones, literally, shake us up.

The Himalayas and north India are on particularly shaky ground. Sometime in the geological past, before humans, India broke off from an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana, a name still used for what is now Chhattisgarh.

The Indian plate skewed north, displaced an ancient sea, travelled more than 2,000 km – the fastest a plate has ever moved – and slammed into the Eurasian plate, creating the Himalayas.

India still grinds northeast into Asia at roughly 5 cm every year. The last significant – but not geologically significant – quake in this area was the 2005 temblor in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which sits directly atop the clashing Indian and Eurasian plates. Around 80,000 people died.

About 60 percent of India is vulnerable to earthquakes caused by the great, northward grind of the Indian subcontinental landmass.

The only serious earthquake that modern India remembers is the temblor that killed about 20,000 in Gujarat in 2001. The 2004 tsunami, which resulted from the third-most most severe quake ever recorded, 9.3 on the Richter scale, occurred when the Indian plate slid with greater violence than it normally does under the neighbouring Burma plate, upon which rest the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

It caused a 100-km-long rupture in the crust, thrusting the seafloor upwards and pushing up masses of water, setting off tsunamis that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries.

No Indian metropolis has witnessed a serious earthquake, although Delhi lies in high-risk Seismic Zone 4. Srinagar and Guwahati are in the highest-risk Zone 5, and Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata lie in Zone 3. History serves a warning that a big one may come at any time. Those lessons come from Bihar in 1934 and Assam in 1950.

Although its epicentre was 10 km south of Mount Everest, the Bihar earthquake of 1934 was felt from Mumbai to Lhasa, flattening almost all major buildings in many Bihar districts and damaging many in Calcutta, now Kolkata. At 8.4 on the Richter scale, it was pretty severe, killing more than 8,100 (Mahatma Gandhi said it was punishment for the sin of untouchability).

The 1950 Assam earthquake may have geologically set the stage for a really big one in the Himalayas, according to geologists. Now that 65 years have passed, it may be time for a big one.

(IANS)

Nepal earthquake toll rises above 3,600

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Nepal_quake

Kathmandu: Rescue workers today intensified efforts to locate survivors trapped under tonnes of rubble of flattened homes and buildings in earthquake-hit Nepal amid concerns that death toll could rise from more than 3,600 with rescue teams reaching remote mountainous areas.

Racing against time, multi-national rescue teams with sniffer dogs and advanced equipment are desperately trying to locate survivors as hundreds of people are still missing.

More than 700 disaster relief experts drawn from the National Disaster Relief Force have been deployed by India.

In a statement, Nepalese police today said the death toll had risen to 3,617 people. That does not include the 22 people killed in the avalanche on Mount Everest.

Nepalese Home ministry’s national disaster management division said more than 6,830 people were injured.

1,053 people are reported killed in the Kathmandu Valley alone and 875 in Sindhupalchowk, it said.

Officials and aid agencies have warned that the casualties could rise as rescue teams reach remote mountainous areas of western Nepal.

“Villages are routinely affected by landslides, and it’s not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rock falls,” aid agency World Vision spokesman Matt Darvas said.

The blocked roads, downed power lines and overcrowded hospitals along with fresh tremors are hampering rescue efforts to locate survivors of the Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude quake that had its impact in several cities in Bihar, West Bengal and UP northeast India.

It was also felt in Southern and Western parts of India, China, Bhutan and as far as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Officials said five Indians, including the daughter of an Indian embassy employee, were among those killed in the quake.

Tens of thousands of people were forced to spend the two consecutive nights sleeping in open in makeshift plastic tents barely shielding them from the pouring rain.

Earlier:

Nepal quake: Death toll crosses 3,200; sick and wounded lay out in the open

Kathmandu: Thousands of desperate Nepalese huddled under tents and sought scarce food and medical supplies on Monday, two days after a massive quake killed more than 3,200 people and overwhelmed authorities struggled to cope with the disaster.

The sick and wounded lay out in the open in the capital, Kathmandu, unable to find beds in the devastated city’s hospitals. Surgeons set up an operating theater inside a tent in the grounds of Kathmandu Medical College.

“We are overwhelmed with rescue and assistance requests from all across the country,” said Deepak Panda, a member of the country’s disaster management.

Across Kathmandu and beyond, exhausted families whose homes were either flattened or at risk of collapse laid mattresses out on streets and erected tents to shelter from rain.

People queued for water dispensed from the back of trucks, while the few stores still open had next to nothing on their shelves. Crowds jostled for medicine at one pharmacy.

High in the Himalayas, hundreds of foreign and Nepalese climbers remained trapped after a huge avalanche ripped through the Mount Everest base camp, killing 17 people in the single worst disaster to hit the world’s highest mountain.

A total of 3,218 people were confirmed killed in the 7.9 magnitude quake, a police official said on Monday, the worst in Nepal since 1934 when 8,500 died. More than 6,500 were injured.

Another 66 were killed across the border in India and at least another 20 in Tibet, China’s state news agency said.

The toll is likely to climb as rescuers struggle to reach remote regions in the impoverished, mountainous country of 28 million people and as bodies buried under rubble are recovered.

“The rescue workers are in a really bad shape. We are all about to collapse. We have worked two straight nights,” said home ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dhakal.

With so many people sleeping in the open with no power or water and downpours forecast, fears mounted of major food and water shortages. Across Nepal, hundreds of villages have been left to fend for themselves.

“There is no electricity, no water. Our main challenge and priority is to restore electricity and water,” Dhakal said.

“The next big challenge is the supply of food. Shopkeepers are unable to go in and open their shops. So people are facing difficulty buying food.”Several countries rushed to send aid and personnel.

India flew in medical supplies and members of its National Disaster Response Force. China sent a 60-strong emergency team. Pakistan’s army said it was sending four C-130 aircraft with a 30-bed hospital, search and rescue teams and relief supplies.

A Pentagon spokesman said a U.S. military aircraft with 70 personnel left the United States on Sunday and was due in Kathmandu on Monday. Australia, Britain and New Zealand said they were sending specialist urban search-and-rescue teams to Kathmandu at Nepal’s request.

Britain, which believes several hundred of its nationals are in Nepal, was also delivering supplies and medics.

However, there has been little sign of international assistance on the ground so far, with some aid flights prevented from landing by aftershocks that closed Kathmandu’s main airport several times on Sunday.

AVALANCHE TERROR

In the Himalayas, hundreds of climbers felt tremors on Sunday powerful enough to send snow and boulders cascading towards them. Another was felt early on Monday.

The huge and deadly avalanche on Saturday triggered by the earthquake caused panic at the Everest base camp, a sprawling “city” of tents from where mountaineers set off for the world’s highest peak.

“It was a monstrous sound, like the demons had descended on the mountain,” Khile Sherpa, a Nepalese guide, told Reuters, recalling the moment the avalanche hit.

He was one of the lucky few airlifted to the relative safety of Kathmandu but the disaster has underlined the woeful state of Nepal’s medical facilities.

Nepal has only 2.1 physicians and 50 hospital beds for every 10,000 people, according to a 2011 World Health Organization report.

“The earthquake has exposed that Nepal’s best public hospital infrastructure has crumbled at a time when it should serve more people in a hurry,” said Sarvendra Moongla, a senior surgeon at Bir Hospital’s Trauma Center in Kathmandu, which opened in February.

At the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, bodies, including that of a boy aged about seven, were heaped in a dark room. The stench of death was overpowering.

Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at business research firm IHS, said long-term reconstruction costs in Nepal using proper building standards for an earthquake zone could be more than $5 billion, or around 20 percent of the country’s GDP.

“With housing construction standards in Nepal being extremely low … the impact of the earthquake has been devastating based on initial reports,” he said in an early analysis of the likely damage.

In crowded Kathmandu, many buildings were flattened or badly damaged.

Among the capital’s landmarks destroyed in the earthquake was the 60-metre (200-foot) Dharahara Tower, built in 1832 for the queen of Nepal.

(Agencies)

Nepal quake: Hundreds dead, history crumbled, Everest shaken

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by AP

Volunteers help with rescue work at the site of a building that collapsed after an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

Kathmandu: A powerful earthquake struck Nepal Saturday, killing at least 718 people across a swath of four countries as the violently shaking earth collapsed houses, leveled centuries-old temples and triggered avalanches on Mt. Everest. It was the worst tremor to hit the poor South Asian nation in over 80 years.

At least 688 people were confirmed dead in Nepal, according to the police. Another 20 were killed in India, six in Tibet and two in Bangladesh. Two Chinese citizens died at the Nepal-China border. Given the scale of the destruction, the death toll is almost certain to rise, said Home Ministry official Laxmi Dhakal.

It was a few minutes before noon when the quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.8, began to rumble across the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, rippling through the capital Kathmandu and spreading in all directions — north toward the Himalayas and Tibet, south to the Indo-Gangetic plains, east toward the Brahmaputra delta of Bangladesh and west toward the historical city of Lahore in Pakistan.

A magnitude-6.6 aftershock hit about an hour later, and smaller aftershocks continued to jolt the region for hours. Residents ran out of homes and buildings in panic. Walls tumbled, large cracks opened up on streets and walls. Towers collapsed and clouds of dust began to swirl all around.

Within hours, hospitals began to fill up with dozens of injured people. Many came to the main hospital in central Kathmandu. Among them was Pushpa Das, a laborer, ran from the house when the first quake struck but could not escape a collapsing wall that injured his arm.

“It was very scary. The earth was moving … I am waiting for treatment but the (hospital) staff is overwhelmed,” he said, gingerly holding his right arm with his left hand. As he spoke dozens of more people showed up with injuries, mostly from falling bricks.

Following the quake, Kathmandu’s international airport was shut down.

While the extent of the damage and the scale of the disaster are yet to be ascertained, the quake will likely put a huge strain on the resources of this poor country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and its rich Hindu culture. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, is heavily dependent on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.

A senior mountaineering guide, Ang Tshering, said an avalanche swept the face of Mt. Everest after the earthquake, and government officials said at least 30 people were injured.

Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said the avalanche occurred between the Khumbu Icefall, a rugged area of collapsed ice and snow, and the base camp where most climbing expeditions have their main camps.

Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, a Dane who is climbing the Everest with a Belgian climber Jelle Veyt, said on his Facebook page that they were at Khumbu Icefall , a rugged area of collapsed ice and snow close to base camp at altitude 5,000 meters (16,500 feet) when the earthquake hit.

He wrote on his Facebook that they have started to receive the injured, including one person with the most severe injuries who sustained many fractures.

“He was blown away by the avalanche and broke both legs. For the camps closer to where the avalanche hit, our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents,” he wrote in English.

“There is now a steady flow of people fleeing basecamp in hope of more security further down the mountain”

The quake’s epicenter was 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu, and it had a depth of only 11 kilometers (7 miles), which is considered shallow in geological terms. The shallower the quake the more destructive power it carries, and witnesses said the trembling and swaying of the earth went on for several minutes..

Several buildings collapsed in the center of the capital, the ancient Old Kathmandu, including centuries-old temples and towers, said resident Prachanda Sual.

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.

Hundreds of people buy tickets on weekends to go up to the viewing platform on the eighth story.

Video footage showed people digging through the rubble of the bricks form the collapsed tower, looking for survivors.

The Kathmandu Valley is densely populated with nearly 2.5 million people, and the quality of buildings is often poor.

In Kathmandu, dozens of people were gathered in the parking lot of Norvic International Hospital, where thin mattresses were spread on the ground for patients rushed outside, some wearing hospital pajamas. A woman with a bandage on her head sat in a set of chairs pulled from the hospital waiting room.

Doctors and nurses hooked up some patients to IV drops in the parking lot, or were giving people oxygen.

The U.S. Geological Survey revised the magnitude from 7.5 to 7.9 but then lowered it to 7.8. It said the quake hit at 11:56 a.m. local time (0611 GMT) at Lamjung. It was the largest shallow quake since the 8.2 temblor off the coast of Chile on April 1, 2014.

The quake — with the same magnitude as the one that hit San Francisco in 1906 — was about 16 times more powerful than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti in 2010.

A magnitude 7 quake is capable of widespread and heavy damage while an 8 magnitude quake can cause tremendous damage.

A Swedish woman, Jenny Adhikari, who lives in Nepal, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that she was riding a bus in the town of Melamchi when the earth began to move.

“A huge stone crashed only about 20 meters (yards) from the bus,” she was quoted as saying. “All the houses around me have tumbled down. I think there are lot of people who have died,” she told the newspaper by telephone. Melamchi is about 45 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Kathmandu.

Residents reported seeing trails of destruction -collapsed walls, broken windows and fallen telephone poles – as they drove through the capital, along with streets filled with terrified people.

But scattered reports also indicated that most buildings in the capital did not collapse.

“It’s too early to make any assessment but the damage isn’t as bad as it could have been,” said Liz Satow, the Nepal director for the aid group World Vision. She said she drove from Kathmandu to the nearby town of Lalitpur and said that while there was considerable damage, most buildings were still intact.

Nepal suffered its worst recorded earthquake in 1934, which measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.

The sustained quake also was felt in India’s capital of New Delhi and several other Indian cities.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a meeting of top government officials to review the damage and disaster preparedness in parts of India that felt strong tremors. The Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Sikkim, which share a border with Nepal, have reported building damage. There have also been reports of damage in the northeastern state of Assam.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offered “all possible help” that Nepal may need.

Naqvi reported from New Delhi. Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Seth Borenstein in Washington DC contributed to this report.

An injured child receives treatment outside Medicare Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a collapsed building is seen in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (Zhou Shengping/Xinhua via AP)

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a collapsed building is seen in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (Zhou Shengping/Xinhua via AP)

An injured child lies on the ground outside the Medicare Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Nepalese people huddle together outside the Medicare Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

An injured man receives treatment outside the Medicare Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

Injured people receive treatment outside the Medicare Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

An man walks past damage caused by an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

An Injured person receives treatment outside the Medicare Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

A building stands damaged after an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

Volunteers work to remove debris at the historic Dharahara tower, a city landmark, after an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A strong magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha)

In this photo provided by Guna Raj Luitel, an injured woman is carried just after an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, April 25, 2015. A powerful earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, collapsing houses, leveling centuries-old temples and cutting open roads in the worst temblor in the Himalayan nation in over 80 years. (Guna Raj Luitel via AP)

Massive quake hits Nepal, shakes India

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earthquake-nepal

Kathmandu/Delhi: A strong earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale shook Nepal and several provinces in India, including the national capital, leaving a trail of devastation in the Himalayan nation.

The temblor that occurred at 11:41 am IST, with its epicentre in Nepal, flattened houses, caused huge craters and cracks on roads in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, and sent people scampering out of their offices and homes.

Videos showed people being pulled out of the rubble of collapsed houses in Kathmandu, though there was no official word on fatalities.

The US Geological Survey, which had earlier put the intensity of the quake at 7.5 on Richter Scale, revised it to 7.9. It said the quake hit at 11:56 am local time at Lamjung, a shallow depth of 11 kilometres.

Tremors were felt in several provinces in northern, eastern and northeastern parts of India, including national capital New Delhi, over 1100 kilometres from the Nepalese capital.

According to Indian Meteoroligical Department, tremors were felt in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab, lasting for a minute, triggering panic and forcing people to rush out of their homes and offices.

There was no official word about casualties from any of the states but reports from West Bengal said cracks appeared in several multi-storeyed buildings in Siliguri in north Bengal. An incident of wall collapse was reported from Telipara in Jalpaiguri district.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is keeping a close watch on the situation, spoke to chief ministers of Bihar and Sikkim.

“We are in the process of finding more information and are working to reach out to those affected, both at home & in Nepal,” he tweeted immediately after the temblor hit several places in India and the neighbouring country.

(PTI)

Tsunami alert sparks panic in Indonesia

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Tsunami Indonesia

Kota Ternate, Indonesia/AFP: A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia Saturday, sparking a tsunami warning and causing panicked people to flee their homes.

Small waves generated by the undersea quake were detected in several parts of the sprawling archipelago, local authorities said, although there were no reports of casualties or major damage and the tsunami warning was lifted after a short while.

Nevertheless, the prospect of a major tsunami set nerves on edge in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, almost a decade after quake-triggered destructive waves devastated western Aceh province.

The tsunami of December 26, 2004, left more than 170,000 people dead in Aceh, on Sumatra island, and tens of thousands more in countries with coasts on the Indian Ocean.

Saturday’s tremor struck northwest of the town of Kota Ternate, at 0231 GMT, the US Geological Survey said. It was followed by a series of aftershocks that measured between magnitude 4.3 and 5.8, the USGS said.

“Tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 300 kilometres,” said the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The centre also warned of small tsunami waves in the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan and islands in the South Pacific.

On the tiny Sangihe Islands close to the epicentre in Indonesia, people ran out of their homes when the quake hit, Toni Supit, head of the islands’ Sitaro district, told AFP.

“People in coastal areas felt the strong quake, which lasted for quite some time, and they immediately went to the sea to see if the water was receding abnormally, which is a sign of an incoming tsunami,” he said.

  • Ring of fire –

Tsunami waves nine centimetres high were detected at Jailolo on Halmahera island, in the Maluku Islands, the meteorological agency said. Tiny waves were also detected in Tobelo on Halmahera, and in Manado, on nearby Sulawesi island.

An agency official on Sulawesi said early reports indicated that cracks had appeared in the walls of some houses after the quake, although full damage reports had yet to come in.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said earlier that waves up to one metre high could hit parts of Indonesia, while waves below 30 centimetres were forecast for the coasts of the Philippines.

Indonesia’s meteorological agency warned people in the northern Maluku Islands and in the north of Sulawesi in particular to stay away from the coast.

Julius Galgiano, a Philippine government seismologist, said the Philippines had also issued a tsunami warning.

“We are telling (local communities) to have a tsunami watch in areas along the coast,” he said, but added that no evacuation orders had been issued and the tsunami waves were not expected to be high.

Around two hours after the quake, the warning centre said there was no longer a tsunami threat.

“The tsunami threat from this earthquake has now mostly passed. Any remaining threat should be evaluated by local authorities in impacted areas,” it said.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity, and has been hit by numerous deadly earthquakes over the years.

A 6.1-magnitude quake that hit inland in Aceh in July last year left at least 30 people dead and thousands homeless. It caused a mosque to collapse in one village, killing six children as they took part in a Koran reading session.

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