NEW DELHI — Seconds after a 7.3-magnitude aftershock rocked Nepal on Tuesday, Nepalis again rushed into the streets, crying, screaming, searching desperately for open ground — and their loved ones.
Politicians in parliament fled from their seats. In remote villages, houses that already were wobbling collapsed completely. Mountains cracked and slid.
The temblor was the largest jolt in the Himalayan nation since the devastating April 25 earthquake that claimed more than 8,000 lives and left more than half a million homes flattened or damaged. The death toll grimly rose throughout the day — to more than 65 combined in Nepal and northern India so far, authorities said.
With renewed search-and-rescue efforts underway, a U.S. Marine helicopter went missing Tuesday near Charikot, a town about 45 miles east of the capital, the U.S. military said. According to Army Maj. Dave Eastburn, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, the UH-1Y “Huey” helicopter was carrying two Nepali soldiers and six U.S. Marines when it was declared missing while conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
In the capital, Kathmandu, residents streamed into the streets, clogging roads and overwhelming the country’s weak mobile-phone network.
Many of them had just begun tentatively returning to their homes, but they vowed that they would be sleeping outside under trekking tents or in their cars again Tuesday night.
Overwhelmed hospitals once again would be treating patients — even the critically ill — outside in tents for fear of aftershocks. At Civil Service Hospital in Kathmandu, dozens of injured were being ferried in by friends and relatives on improvised stretchers, on motorcycles and in cars.
The South Asian country of 28 million had been trying to recover after last month’s devastation. Shops and markets were starting to reopen, and electricity had been restored. Now the most wide-ranging relief effort in the country’s history has been stopped in its tracks.
Military rescue operations will run parallel with relief operations, according to Khagaraj Adhikari, Nepal’s minister of health and population. Many foreign rescue teams had left the country, he said, but the Nepali government would ask those remaining to stay until the new crisis has passed.
In Tuesday’s chaos, many aid workers were feared trapped. Nichola Jones, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Nepal, said a Canadian medical team was trapped in the Tatopani area, close to the quake’s epicenter.
