adminKathmandu — Four South Africans are trapped on a mountain pass north of Kathmandu, Nepal, it was reported yesterday.
Rescue organisation Gift of the Givers, which has sent a team to Nepal to assist in the search and rescue operation, said that the South Africans were stuck on Langtang Pass, north of Kathmandu. The death toll from an earthquake in the mountainous country is almost 5,500 and it is feared the toll would rise even more.
According to eNCA reporter Malungelo Booi, who is in Nepal with organisation, the two couples are with about 20 other people from other countries on the popular hiking spot. No information was yet available on the identities of the missing South Africans.
Meanwhile, frustration is growing in parts of rural Nepal over the pace of relief efforts, with some badly-affected villages yet to receive any assistance.
Survivors in some areas told the BBC that they were angry that neither food nor medicine has reached them.
The UN has appealed for $415m to help provide emergency relief over the next three months.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy has been rescued alive after spending five days trapped under rubble in Kathmandu.
Crowds cheered as the boy was brought blinking into the daylight, a BBC reporter at the scene says.
Officials say Saturday’s quake killed more than 5,500 people, and injured at least 11,000. The UN says more than eight million people have been affected by quake and some 70,000 houses have been destroyed.
The government says it has been overwhelmed by the disaster. In several villages north-east of the capital, Kathmandu, no buildings have been left untouched and bodies are still lying under the rubble, the BBC’s Richard Galpin reports. There has been no help from the government or aid agencies even though supplies could easily be brought in by road or by helicopter, he says.
“We will die if there is no help from the government or other organisations,” Dhan Bahadur Shresta, a resident of Deupur Sipaghat Kavre village, said.
“We will starve to death and could get diseases like cholera and dysentery and there could be an epidemic.”
Some helicopter crews who have managed to land in isolated communities have been faced with desperate villagers pleading to be airlifted to safety.
In the village of Sangachowk, angry villagers blocked the main road with tyres and stopped trucks of rice and other aid headed for other areas. The villagers also reportedly blocked a convoy of army trucks loaded with relief supplies, leading to a tense standoff with soldiers. — AFP
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