Nepal scrambles to hand out aid

Nepalese officials struggled to get aid from the main airport to people left homeless and hungry by Saturday’s destructive earthquake as the death toll reached to 4,000 on Monday. Another 6,500 persons have been injured.

A senior official said the death toll may reach 5,000 in the worse such disaster in Nepal since 1934, when 8,500 people were killed.

Thousands of wrecked and injured people tired of waiting, left the capital Kathmandu for the surrounding plains.

Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport was restricted by many employees as they did not show up for work, people tried to get out, and a sequence of aftershocks which forced it to close several times since the earthquake. Home Minister Bam Dev Gautam was handling aid delivery and arranging for passengers to leave the country.

In Kathmandu, sick and injured people were lying out in the open as they were unable to find beds in the destructed city’s hospitals. Doctors set up an operating theatre inside a tent in the grounds of Kathmandu Medical College. Government officials said they required more supplies of medicines, food, specialized rescue services and body bags.

Shankar Koirala, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office said, “The mortuary are getting full.” He is dealing with the disposal of bodies.