Nepal earthquake and Everest avalanche kill 2,500 people with 'violent' aftershock causing more chaos

We are safe and we are hanging tough in here. It is kind of nerve-wracking being around here with this earthquake and avalanche going down around us.

We felt four, maybe five aftershocks yesterday. There was a massive glacier which felt as if it was sliding up and down. We are feeling pretty precarious right now.

21.12
Richard Spencer, and Thomas Bell in Kathmandu, have reported on the scenes in Kathmandu. Here is a short extract:

The first smoke of the funeral pyres was wafting last night over what remained of Nepal's magnificent Hindu temples.

The three great royal Durbars, the whitewash and red brick squares of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, were shattered by Saturday's earthquake.

They can and almost certainly will be rebuilt. But those thousands who cannot be brought back were being sent to the heavens yesterday in traditional and simple ceremonies, against a broken landscape.


Nepalese people gather to cremate their family members who died in the earthquake in Bhaktapur near Kathmandu (Niranjan Shrestha/AP)


People sit inside their makeshift shelter on open ground after an earthquake in Kathmandu (Reuters)

20.32
If you want to donate to the aid groups in Nepal, here are a few of the charities calling for urgent help:

- UNICEF says it is preparing two cargo flights with a combined 120 tons of humanitarian supplies including medical and hospital supplies, tents and blankets, for urgent airlift to Kathmandu

- UN World Food Program says logistics and emergency response teams have arrived in Kathmandu

- International Committee for the Red Cross says it is working with the Nepal Red Cross Society and has a team working on emergency response

- Save the Children says it has staff in 63 districts and emergency kits, hygiene materials and tarpaulins already in Nepal and ready for distribution. Additional supplies and emergency recovery teams are being flown in

- Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, says it is sending medical staff and supplies to Nepal, including emergency surgical teams


People stand in a queue to get drinking water from a tanker after the earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

19.59
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says it is "almost certain" that British nationals will have been caught up in the earthquakes - but there have been no reports of any British nationals killed or injured.

He said in a statement released on Sunday evening:

There are several hundred British nationals in Nepal at this time of year and we expect that almost certainly some will have been caught up in the earthquakes. But at this moment we have no reports of any British nationals killed or injured.

British Embassy staff are on the ground and have provided practical help to around 200 British nationals. Teams of consular staff have also been out scouring hospitals, hotels and areas popular with tourists looking for British nationals who may need assistance.

Damage to communications infrastructure caused by the earthquakes is making it difficult to contact people who may have been trekking in remote areas so it may be some time before we, working with the tour companies, are able to identify who is in Nepal and to account for them.

The Foreign Office is urgently deploying additional consular response teams from London and Delhi to reinforce our embassy staff and looking at what else we can do. In the meantime my colleague Justine Greening chaired a COBR meeting in London this afternoon and DFID is providing £5m of humanitarian aid for Nepal."


Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary

19.34
Several dozen US aid workers headed to Nepal on Sunday aboard a military transport plane to provide assistance.

The C-17 Globemaster aircraft left Dover Air Force Base in Delaware around 11:18am (1518 GMT), and is expected to land in Nepal on Monday, the US military said.

Our DART along w/ nearly 60 @ffxfirerescue #USAR team members is on the way to help w/ #NepalEarthquake response pic.twitter.com/R9XtB9eNiq

— USAID/OFDA (@theOFDA) April 26, 2015
"The aircraft is transporting nearly 70 personnel including a USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue team and several journalists, along with 45 square tons of cargo," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said.

19.21
The earthquake in Nepal has exposed the woeful state of its medical facilities as hospitals struggle to treat vast numbers of injured with limited supplies and staff, Reuters reports.

The country of 28 million has only 2.1 physicians and 50 hospital beds for every 10,000 people, according to a 2011 World Health Organization report.

So far many of the seriously injured in Kathmandu were being referred to Bir Hospital's Trauma Centre, which opened in February this year with 200 beds.

Doctors said they needed more than 1,000 more beds to treat the patients that were being brought in ambulances and taxis.

Remote regions have only very basic medical centres that are ill-equipped to handle serious injuries.

19.05
A 32-year-old doctor who specialises in Himalayan archaeology was said to be “absolutely terrified” and incredibly shaken after narrowly avoiding death in the devastating earthquake.

Hayley Saul, from Northampton, had left Langtang village in Kathmandu just two hours before it was completely wiped out in the quake.


Hayley Saul, left, with Emma Waterton, with whom she was travelling

Her sister, Emma Price, 24, said:

She had just left Langtang village and that village has gone now. The path they were trekking on had gone and they had to trek another five or six hours to get to the next village.

Huge boulders were falling and following them, the river was blocked in places and she was worried it would flood, the cliffs were shaking with the aftershocks. It was absolutely terrifying.

They were just on the path when it happened. She said they just ran.

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17.52
The UK is devoting an extra £5 million to help relief efforts following the devastating earthquake in Nepal, the Department for International Development has announced.

Rapid deployment teams are also being sent to the country to provide assistance to stranded Britons.

A total of £3 million has been released under the Rapid Response Facility (RRF) to address immediate, on-the-ground needs and £2 million has been released to the British Red Cross.

UK Government officials in Kathmandu and London are providing consular assistance to Brits who have been caught up in this disaster, and the Foreign Office has also opened a crisis hotline for those concerned about loved ones.

International Development Secretary Justine Greening said:

As the death toll rises and the scale of this devastating earthquake becomes evident, the UK is continuing to do everything it can to help all those affected by this tragedy.

I have now activated the Rapid Response Facility. This means we can fast-track funding to aid workers on the ground so they can provide desperately needed supplies including clean water, shelter, household items and blankets.

We are also sending humanitarian experts from the UK to provide urgent support on the ground.

17.47
Unicef have said that at least 940,000 children in areas affected by the earthquake are in "urgent need" of humanitarian assistance. Unicef staff reported dwindling water supplies, power shortages and communications breakdowns.

A mother tends to her daughter, injured in Nepal's recent earthquake, at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (Unicef)