Hopes fade of finding Nepal survivors
By Binaj Gurubacharya and Foster Klug
May 2, 2015, 3:52 pm
Nepal has ruled out the possibility of finding more survivors buried in the rubble from a massive earthquake that killed more than 6700 people.
One week on from Nepal's deadliest quake in more than 80 years, hopes of detecting more signs of life among the ruins of the capital Kathmandu have all but disappeared and the focus is shifting to reaching survivors in far-flung areas who have yet to receive relief supplies.
Nearly a week after the earthquake, Nepal still urgently needs basic aid like shelter and food.
The UN children's fund UNICEF warned of a race against time to avert an outbreak of disease among the 1.7 million youngsters estimated to be living in the worst-hit areas, with monsoon rains just weeks away.
The 7.8-magnitude quake wreaked a trail of death and destruction when it erupted about midday last Saturday, reducing much of Kathmandu to rubble and triggering a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.
"We are trying our best in rescue and relief work, but now I don't think that there is any possibility of survivors under the rubble," home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal told AFP.
As well as updating the death toll to 6621, Dhakal put the number of injured at 14,023.
While multiple teams of rescuers from more than 20 countries have been using sniffer dogs and heat-seeking equipment to find survivors in the rubble, no one has been pulled out alive since Thursday evening.
More than 100 people were also killed in neighbouring India and China.
The number of foreigners who have been killed is unclear but diplomats say about 1000 EU citizens are still unaccounted for.
Most of the Europeans were climbing in the Everest region or trekking in the remote Langtang range in the Himalayas near the quake epicentre.
"They are missing but we don't know what their status is," EU ambassador to Nepal Rensje Teerink told reporters, confirming that 12 EU citizens are known to have died so far.
The Nepalese government has acknowledged being overwhelmed but the UN's humanitarian chief defended its performance.
"The scale and devastation wreaked by the earthquake and the aftershocks would have challenged any government," Valerie Amos said on Friday.
UNICEF said the health and wellbeing of children affected by the disaster were "hanging in the balance" as so many had been left homeless, in deep shock and with no access to basic care.
"Hospitals are overflowing, water is scarce, bodies are still buried under the rubble and people are still sleeping in the open. This is a perfect breeding ground for diseases," the UNICEF's deputy representative in Nepal, Rownak Khan, said.
"We have a small window of time to put in place measures that will keep earthquake-affected children safe from infectious disease outbreaks, a danger that would be exacerbated by the wet and muddy conditions brought on with the rains," Khan said.
