Powerful Earthquake Kills 128 in Nepal

Nepal – At least 128 people have been reported killed after powerful earthquake hit western Nepal on Friday, then officials said that the death toll could rise. 

One eyewitness said that houses in the area collapsed and shaking buildings as far as New Delhi, India. 

Nepal's National Seismological Centre revealed that earthquake was a magnitude 6.4 but the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) later downgraded the magnitude to 5.7 and the United States Geological Survey set it as a magnitude 5.6, as reported from CNA site. 

The earthquake is the deadliest since 2015 when about 9,000 people were killed in two earthquakes in the Himalayan country.

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 US$6 billion.

The officials worried the death toll in Friday's quake could rise as they had not been able to establish contact in the hilly area near the epicentre, some 500 km west of the capital Kathmandu, where tremors were also felt. 

The district has a population of 190,000 with villages scattered in remote hills.

"The number of injured could be in the hundreds and the deaths could go up as well," Jajarkot district official Harish Chandra Sharma said. 

Meanwhile, Police spokesman Kuber Kadayat said 92 people were killed in Jajarkot and 36 in neighbouring Rukum West district, both in Karnali province. The epicentre was in the village of Ramidanda.

At least 85 people were injured in Rukum West and 55 in Jajarkot, an official in the prime minister's office said, while Sharma said at least 50 people were in hospitals in Jajarkot alone.

"Many houses have collapsed, many others have developed cracks. Thousands of residents spent the entire night in cold, open grounds because they were too scared to go into the cracked houses as aftershocks struck," Sharma said.