DHAKA: The overall death toll from a massive earthquake which devastated large parts of Nepal has passed 2,000, officials in the Himalayan nation and neighboring countries said Sunday.

National police spokesman Kamal Singh Ban said the number known to have died in Nepal had risen to 1,953 while officials in India said the toll there now stood at 53. Chinese state media said 17 people had been killed in the Tibet region.

Rescuers were digging with their bare hands and bodies piled up in Nepal on Sunday. Army officer Santosh Nepal and a group of rescuers worked all night to open a passage into a collapsed building in the capital Kathmandu.

They had to use pick axes because bulldozers could not get through the ancient city’s narrow streets.

‘We believe there are still people trapped inside,’ he told the media, pointing at concrete debris and twisted reinforcement rods where a three-storey residential building once stood.

In Everest’s worst disaster, the bodies of 17 climbers were recovered from the mountain on Sunday after being caught in avalanches, but hundreds, many injured, remain stranded on the mountain.

With the government overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, India flew in medical supplies and relief crews, while China sent in a 60-strong emergency team. Among the capital’s landmarks destroyed in the earthquake was the 60-metre Dharahara Tower, built in 1832 for the queen of Nepal, with a viewing balcony that had been open to visitors for the last 10 years.

A jagged stump was all that was left of the lighthouse-like structure, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1159 HRS, APR 26, 2015
RR