Rescuers struggle to find Nepal quake survivors as deaths reach 157

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By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) -Rescue workers in Nepal began digging through the rubble of collapsed houses with their bare hands on Saturday, searching for survivors after the country's worst earthquake in eight years killed 157 people and shook buildings as far away as New Delhi.

The quake struck the Jajarkot region in the west of the Himalayan nation at 11:47 p.m. (1802 GMT) on Friday with a 6.4 magnitude, Nepal's National Seismological Centre said. The German Research Centre for Geosciences measured it at 5.7 and the U.S. Geological Survey at 5.6.

Officials fear the death toll could rise as first responders had reached the hilly area near the epicentre, some 500 km (300 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, only early on Saturday and began searching for survivors.

«The number of injured could be in the hundreds and the deaths could go up as well,» Jajarkot district official Harish Chandra Sharma told Reuters by phone.

Although the quake's magnitude was not severe, the damage and the death toll are high due to the poor quality of construction in the area and because it struck while people slept, officials said.

Rescue work was expected to be slow as emergency teams must first clear roads blocked by landslides in many places, they said, adding that helicopters and small planes have been asked to be ready to join the effort.

The quake is the deadliest since 2015 when about 9,000 people were killed in two earthquakes. Whole towns, centuries-old temples and other historic sites were reduced to rubble then, with more than a million houses destroyed, at a cost to the economy of $6 billion.

The death toll included 105 people killed in Jajarkot and 52 in neighbouring Rukum West district, both in Karnali province, Rama