KATMANDU: A powerful earthquake struck Nepal Saturday, killing at least 718 people across a swath of four countries as the violently shaking earth collapsed houses, leveled centuries-old temples and triggered avalanches on Mt. Everest. It was the worst tremor to hit the poor South Asian nation in over 80 years.
At least 688 people were confirmed dead in Nepal, according to the police. Another 20 were killed in India, six in Tibet and two in Bangladesh. Two Chinese citizens died at the Nepal-China border. Given the scale of the destruction, the death toll is almost certain to rise, said Home Ministry official Laxmi Dhakal.
It was a few minutes before noon when the quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.8, began to rumble across the densely populated Katmandu Valley, rippling through the capital Katmandu and spreading in all directions — north toward the Himalayas and Tibet, south to the Indo-Gangetic plains, east toward the Brahmaputra delta of Bangladesh and west toward the historical city of Lahore in Pakistan.
A magnitude-6.6 aftershock hit about an hour later, and smaller aftershocks continued to jolt the region for hours. Residents ran out of homes and buildings in panic. Walls tumbled, large cracks opened up on streets and walls. Towers collapsed and clouds of dust began to swirl all around.
Within hours, hospitals began to fill up with dozens of injured people. Many came to the main hospital in central Katmandu. Among them was Pushpa Das, a laborer, ran from the house when the first quake struck but could not escape a collapsing wall that injured his arm.
“It was very scary. The earth was moving ... I am waiting for treatment but the (hospital) staff is overwhelmed,” he said, gingerly holding his right arm with his left hand. As he spoke dozens of more people showed up with injuries, mostly from falling bricks.
Following the quake, Katmandu’s international airport was shut down.
While the extent of the damage and the scale of the disaster are yet to be ascertained, the quake will likely put a huge strain on the resources of this poor country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and its rich Hindu culture. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, is heavily dependent on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.
A senior mountaineering guide, Ang Tshering, said an avalanche swept the face of Mt. Everest after the earthquake, and government officials said at least 30 people were injured.
Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said the avalanche occurred between the Khumbu Icefall, a rugged area of collapsed ice and snow, and the base camp where most climbing expeditions have their main camps.
Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, a Dane who is climbing the Everest with a Belgian climber Jelle Veyt, said on his Facebook page that they were at Khumbu Icefall , a rugged area of collapsed ice and snow close to base camp at altitude 5,000 meters (16,500 feet) when the earthquake hit.
He wrote on his Facebook that they have started to receive the injured, including one person with the most severe injuries who sustained many fractures.
“He was blown away by the avalanche and broke both legs. For the camps closer to where the avalanche hit, our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents,” he wrote in English.
“There is now a steady flow of people fleeing basecamp in hope of more security further down the mountain“
The quake’s epicenter was 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Katmandu, and it had a depth of only 11 kilometers (7 miles), which is considered shallow in geological terms. The shallower the quake the more destructive power it carries, and witnesses said the trembling and swaying of the earth went on for several minutes..
Several buildings collapsed in the center of the capital, the ancient Old Katmandu, including centuries-old temples and towers, said resident Prachanda Sual.
Among them was the nine-story Dharahara Tower, one of Katmandu’s landmarks built by Nepal’s royal rulers as a watchtower in the 1800s and a UNESCO-recognized historical monument. It was reduced to rubble and there were reports of people trapped underneath.
Hundreds of people buy tickets on weekends to go up to the viewing platform on the eighth story.
Video footage showed people digging through the rubble of the bricks form the collapsed tower, looking for survivors.
The Katmandu Valley is densely populated with nearly 2.5 million people, and the quality of buildings is often poor.
In Katmandu, dozens of people were gathered in the parking lot of Norvic International Hospital, where thin mattresses were spread on the ground for patients rushed outside, some wearing hospital pajamas. A woman with a bandage on her head sat in a set of chairs pulled from the hospital waiting room.
Doctors and nurses hooked up some patients to IV drops in the parking lot, or were giving people oxygen.
The US Geological Survey revised the magnitude from 7.5 to 7.9 but then lowered it to 7.8. It said the quake hit at 11:56 a.m. local time (0611 GMT) at Lamjung. It was the largest shallow quake since the 8.2 temblor off the coast of Chile on April 1, 2014.
The quake — with the same magnitude as the one that hit San Francisco in 1906 — was about 16 times more powerful than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti in 2010.
A magnitude 7 quake is capable of widespread and heavy damage while an 8 magnitude quake can cause tremendous damage.
A Swedish woman, Jenny Adhikari, who lives in Nepal, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that she was riding a bus in the town of Melamchi when the earth began to move.
“A huge stone crashed only about 20 meters (yards) from the bus,” she was quoted as saying. “All the houses around me have tumbled down. I think there are lot of people who have died,” she told the newspaper by telephone. Melamchi is about 45 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Katmandu.
Residents reported seeing trails of destruction -collapsed walls, broken windows and fallen telephone poles — as they drove through the capital, along with streets filled with terrified people.
But scattered reports also indicated that most buildings in the capital did not collapse.
“It’s too early to make any assessment but the damage isn’t as bad as it could have been,” said Liz Satow, the Nepal director for the aid group World Vision. She said she drove from Katmandu to the nearby town of Lalitpur and said that while there was considerable damage, most buildings were still intact.
Nepal suffered its worst recorded earthquake in 1934, which measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Katmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.
The sustained quake also was felt in India’s capital of New Delhi and several other Indian cities.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a meeting of top government officials to review the damage and disaster preparedness in parts of India that felt strong tremors. The Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Sikkim, which share a border with Nepal, have reported building damage. There have also been reports of damage in the northeastern state of Assam.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offered “all possible help” that Nepal may need.
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Naqvi reported from New Delhi. Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Seth Borenstein in Washington DC contributed to this report.
Nepal quake: Hundreds dead, history crumbled, Everest shaken
Nepal quake: Hundreds dead, history crumbled, Everest shaken
Sri Lankan navy seizes 800 kg of heroin, meth in record drug bust
- The country of 22 million people is known as a hub for drug trafficking
- New president says he is determined to eliminate drug abuse
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan naval forces have made a record drug seizure after finding more than 800 kilograms of heroin and crystal methamphetamine on a fishing vessel off the country’s west coast.
The island nation of 22 million people is known as a hub for drug trafficking.
There has been an increase in drug-related incidents in recent years, with about 162,000 people arrested in 2023 for such offenses, government data showed. In 2017, the number was about 81,000.
In a special operation on the high seas on Saturday morning, the Sri Lanka Navy confiscated a multi-day fishing trawler and arrested seven suspects.
“This is the largest amount of drugs caught by the Sri Lankan navy from a multi-day Sri Lankan fishing trawler,” Sri Lanka Navy spokesman Cmdr. Buddhika Sampath told Arab News on Sunday.
They were brought to Dikkowita Harbor, about 10 kilometers north of the capital Colombo, for an inspection carried out by the Police Narcotic Bureau.
“They scaled them and found ICE (crystal meth), approximately more than 671 kilograms, and heroin approximately more than 191 kilograms,” Sampath said.
The drugs were “meticulously hidden” in the multi-day fishing trawler, the navy said in a statement.
Because investigations are still ongoing, authorities have yet to confirm the origin and destination of the trawler used to transport the drugs.
The Sri Lanka Navy said it has been working with local and international intelligence agencies to tighten “its grip on criminal networks operating” in Sri Lankan waters.
“No illegal substances, particularly narcotics, will be allowed to enter the country via sea routes,” the navy statement read.
“Smuggling of narcotics disguised as fishing operations, or any attempt to aid and abet such activities, will be met with strict action.”
Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who took office in September, has called on authorities to scale up efforts to “suppress drug trafficking” since late last year.
In a discussion with police chiefs from the Western Province — the country’s most densely populated — last month, he said he was committed to “eliminate organized crime and drug abuse” in the country.
Al-Shabab launches mortar attacks near Somalia’s main airport
MOGADISHU: Al-Shabab militants fired multiple mortar rounds near Mogadishu’s airport on Sunday morning, disrupting international flights to Somalia, a security official told AFP.
The attack comes just weeks after a roadside bomb blast narrowly missed the convoy of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, with Al-Shabab claiming responsibility.
According to security sources, the mortars were launched from the outskirts of Mogadishu and landed in an open area of Aden Adde International Airport.
“There were about two to three mortar shells that struck an open area of the airport early this morning,” a security official, who requested anonymity, told AFP.
A Turkish plane scheduled to land at the airport was rerouted to Djibouti, an airport employee said, also speaking on condition of anonymity. He added that they were informed EgyptAir had also canceled its flight for the day.
Halane camp — a heavily fortified compound that houses the United Nations, aid agencies, foreign missions, and the headquarters of the UN-backed African Union Transition Mission (ATMIS) — was also targeted, according to ATMIS spokesman Lt. Col. Said Mwachinalo.
“There has been shelling. Our team is currently on the ground making assessment,” Mwachinalo told AFP.
No casualties have been reported so far and some operations at the airport seems to be ongoing, the security official said.
The government is yet to comment on the attack.
Al-Shabab has been fighting the federal government in Somalia for over 15 years and analysts say it has become an increasing threat in recent months.
The latest attacks have raised fears of a resurgence of the jihadist militia, potentially reversing gains made by the Somali government and its international partners over the years, analysts say.
Main Turkish opposition rallies as protests rage on
ANKARA: Turkiye’s main opposition party will hold an extraordinary congress on Sunday to re-elect its leader Ozgur Ozel, rallying support as the party weathers the government’s crackdown on the country’s largest protest movement in years.
Turkiye has clamped down on demonstrations triggered by last month’s arrest of Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, also a member of Ozel’s Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Nearly 2,000 people have been detained in the unrest following the detention of the man widely considered President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s greatest political challenger, including several hundred students, journalists and young people.
On Thursday authorities briefly detained 11 people, including a leading actor, with prosecutors accusing the suspects of “incitement to hatred and enmity” for relaying calls for a boycott.
“I will talk to party members in the hall but outside, I will be meeting tens or hundreds of thousands” of people, Ozel said, calling for “all citizens, whether they voted for CHP or not” to gather outside the congress hall in Ankara on Sunday.
“Our congress’s main demand will be the release of our presidential candidate Ekrem Imamoglu,” added the CHP leader, who has become the face of the protests since the Istanbul mayor’s arrest.
The party hopes Sunday’s events will help counter further political and judicial pressure, following the dismissal and arrest of seven mayors from its ranks.
PROTESTS TO SHOW FORCE
Eren Aksoyoglu, a political communications analyst, said the party will use Sunday’s meeting as an opportunity for a “show of force” in the face of the crackdown.
According to Turkish media reports, the authorities are seeking to remove the CHP party’s leaders, a year after the opposition’s sweeping victory in municipal elections.
“We decided to convene an extraordinary congress on April 6 to block attempts to appoint a trustee” to head the party, Ozel said on March 21.
The party came out on top in the March 2024 municipal elections with nearly 38 percent of the vote across the country.
In addition to maintaining its lead in large cities such as Istanbul and Ankara, the CHP also made inroads into regions previously considered Erdogan strongholds.
In the days following Imamoglu’s arrest, the CHP drew tens of thousands of people into the streets of Istanbul and many other cities to denounce a “coup d’etat.”
Besides calling people to rally the CHP has managed to put pressure on the authorities by other means, such as the boycott of companies deemed close to the government.
The opposition party called on Turkish people to hold a day-long boycott on purchases last Wednesday in support of the hundreds of students detained since the start of the protests.
That day, many cafes, bars and restaurants in Istanbul and Ankara were deserted as people followed their calls, AFP journalists saw.
“Since Imamoglu’s arrest, Ozgur Ozel has given the CHP the image of a party that listens to the street and leads a tenacious opposition,” said Aksoyoglu.
“This approach has been successful within the CHP and with voters,” the political analyst added.
For Berk Esen, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, Ozel “may not be a very charismatic speaker but he’s articulate, precise and very critical of those in power.”
“Ozel is at the head of the CHP but has not yet fully assumed the role of leader,” he added. “By pursuing a tenacious opposition to Erdogan, he could strengthen his leadership.”
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are still held by Russia with uncertain hope of release
- One human rights activist says that while politicians discuss rare-earth minerals, territorial concessions and geopolitical interests, they’re not talking about people
- It’s unknown how many Ukrainian civilians are in custody, both in occupied regions and inside Russia. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets estimates it at over 20,000
When she heard her front door open almost two years ago, Kostiantyn Zinovkin’s mother thought her son had returned home because he forgot something. Instead, men in balaclavas burst into the apartment in Melitopol, a southern Ukrainian city occupied by Russian forces.
They said Zinovkin was detained for a minor infraction and would be released soon. They used his key to enter, said his wife, Liusiena, and searched the flat so thoroughly that they tore it apart “into molecules.”
But Zinovkin wasn’t released. Weeks after his May 2023 arrest, the Russians told his mother he was plotting a terrorist attack. He’s now standing trial on charges his family calls absurd.
Zinovkin is one of thousands of civilians in Russian captivity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insists their release, along with prisoners of war, will be an important step toward ending the 3-year-old war.
So far, it hasn’t appeared high on the agenda in US talks with Moscow and Kyiv.
“While politicians discuss natural resources, possible territorial concessions, geopolitical interests and even Zelensky’s suit in the Oval Office, they’re not talking about people,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
Thousands held
In January, the center and other Ukrainian and Russian rights groups launched “People First,” a campaign that says any peace settlement must prioritize the release of everyone they say are captives, including Russians jailed for protesting the war, as well as Ukrainian children who were illegally deported.
“You can’t achieve sustainable peace without taking into account the human dimension,” Matviichuk told The Associated Press.
It’s unknown how many Ukrainian civilians are in custody, both in occupied regions and in Russia. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets has estimated over 20,000.
Matviichuk says her group received over 4,000 requests to help civilian detainees. She notes it’s against international law to detain noncombatants in war.
Oleg Orlov, co-founder of the Russian rights group Memorial, says advocates know at least 1,672 Ukrainian civilians are in Moscow’s custody.
“There’s a larger number of them that we don’t know about,” added Orlov, whose organization won the Nobel alongside Matviichuk’s group and is involved in People First.
Detained without charges
Many are detained for months without charges and don’t know why they’re being held, Orlov said.
Russian soldiers detained Mykyta Shkriabin, then 19, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in March 2022. He left the basement where his family was sheltering from fighting to get supplies and never returned.
Shkriabin was detained even though he wasn’t charged with a crime, said his lawyer, Leonid Solovyov. In 2023, the authorities began referring to him as a POW, a status Solovyov seeks to contest since the student wasn’t a combatant.
Shkriabin’s mother, Tetiana, told AP last month she still doesn’t know where her son is held. In three years, she’s received two letters from him saying he’s doing well and that she shouldn’t worry.
She’s hoping for “a prisoner exchange, a repatriation, or something,” Shkriabina said. Without hope, “how does one hang in there?”
Terrorism, treason and espionage
Others face charges that their relatives say are fabricated.
After being seized in Melitopol, Zinovkin was jailed for over two years and charged with seven offenses, including plotting a terrorist attack, assembling weapons and high treason, his wife Liusiena Zinovkina told AP, describing the charges as “absurd.”
While vocally pro-Ukrainian and against Russia’s occupation, her husband couldn’t plot to bomb anyone and had no weapons skills, she said.
Especially nonsensical is the treason charge, she said, because Russian law stipulates that only its citizens can be charged with that crime, and Zinovkin has never held Russian citizenship, unless it was forced upon him in jail. A conviction could bring life in prison.
Ukrainian civilian Serhii Tsyhipa, 63, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security prison after he disappeared in March 2022 while walking his dog in Nova Kakhovka, in the partially occupied Kherson region, said his wife, Olena. The dog also vanished.
Tsyhipa, a journalist, was wearing a jacket with a large red cross sewn on it. Both he and his wife, Olena, had those jackets, she told AP, because they volunteered to distribute food and other essentials when Russian troops invaded.
Serhii Tsyhipa protested the occupation, and Olena believes that led to his arrest.
He was held for months in Crimea and finally charged with espionage in December 2022. Almost a year later, in October 2023, Tsyhipa was convicted and sentenced in a trial that lasted only three hearings.
He appealed, but his sentence was upheld. “But the Russian authorities must understand that we are fighting — that we are doing everything possible to bring him home,” she said.
Mykhailo Savva of the Expert Council of the Center for Civil Liberties said rights advocates know of 307 Ukrainian civilians convicted in Russia on criminal charges — usually espionage or treason, if the person held a Russian passport, but also terrorism and extremism.
He said that in Ukraine’s occupied territories, Russians see activists, community leaders and journalists as “the greatest threat.”
Winning release for those already serving sentences would be an uphill battle, advocates say.
Held in harsh conditions
Relatives must piece together scraps of information about prison conditions.
Zinovkina said she has received letters from her husband who told her of problems with his sight, teeth and back. Former prisoners also told her of cramped, cold basement cells in a jail in Rostov, where he’s being held.
She believes her husband was pressured to sign a confession. A man who met him in jail told her Kostiantyn “confessed to everything they wanted him to, so the worst is over” for him.
Orlov said Ukrainian POWs and civilians are known to be held in harsh conditions, where allegations of abuse and torture are common.
The Kremlin tested those methods during the two wars it waged in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s, well before invading Ukraine, said Orlov, who recently went to Ukraine to document Russia’s human rights violations and saw the pattern repeated from the North Caucasus conflicts.
“Essentially, a misanthropic system has been created, and everyone who falls into it ends up in hell,” added Matviichuk, the Ukrainian human rights worker.
A recent report by the UN Human Rights Council said Russia “committed enforced disappearances and torture as crimes against humanity,” part of a “systematic attack against the civilian population and pursuant to a coordinated state policy.”
It said Russia “detained large numbers of civilians,” jailed them in occupied Ukraine or deported them to Russia, and “systematically used torture against certain categories of detainees to extract information, coerce, and intimidate.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry, the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Federal Security Service did not respond to requests for comment.
Tempering hope with patience
As the US talks about a ceasefire, relatives continue to press for the captives’ release.
Liusiena Zinovkina says she hasn’t abandoned hope as her husband, now 35, stands trial but is tempering her expectations.
“I see that it’s not as simple as the American president thought. It’s not that easy to come to an agreement with Russia,” she said, reminding herself “to be patient. It will happen, but not tomorrow.”
Olena Tsyhipa said every minute counts for her husband, whose health has deteriorated.
“My belief in his return is unwavering,” she said. “We just have to wait.”
Rain complicates recovery in quake-hit Myanmar as death toll rises
- Rain is compounding misery and presenting new hurdles for relief efforts on Sunday in Myanmar, where state media reported the death toll from a devastating earthquake has risen to nearly 3,500 people
YANGON: Rain is compounding misery and presenting new hurdles for relief efforts on Sunday in Myanmar, where state media reported the death toll from a devastating earthquake has risen to nearly 3,500 people.
The 7.7-magnitude quake struck on March 28, razing buildings, cutting off power and destroying bridges and roads across the country.
Damage has been particularly severe in the city of Sagaing near the epicenter, as well as in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city with more than 1.7 million residents.
State media in the military junta-led country now say that the earthquake has caused 3,471 confirmed deaths and injured 4,671 people, while 214 remain missing.
With people either having lost their homes entirely or reluctant to spend time in cracked and unstable structures, many residents have been sleeping outside in tents.
Around 45 minutes of heavy rain and winds lashed tent cities Saturday evening in Mandalay, according to the UN Development Programme.
People and their belongings were soaked because of a shortage of tarpaulins, Tun Tun, a program specialist at the UN agency, told AFP.
There are also fears destroyed buildings will subside and complicate body recovery efforts.
Following less intense showers Sunday morning, the temperature is due to climb to 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Farenheit).
“The weather is very extreme,” Tun Tun told AFP, with further rain forecast.
Aid experts warn that rainy conditions and scorching heat increase the risk of disease outbreaks at outdoor camps where victims were in temporary shelter.
United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said that food, water, and power repairs were needed urgently, in a video filmed in Mandalay and posted to X on Sunday.
Many people in the area are still without shelter, he said, describing the scale of damage in the area as “epic.”
“We need to get tents and hope to survivors as they rebuild their shattered lives,” Fletcher wrote in another post.
Myanmar has been ruled by junta leader Min Aung Hlaing since 2021, when his military seized power in a coup that overthrew the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
International efforts to provide quake relief in the Southeast Asian country of more than 50 million people have been complicated by unreliable communication networks and infrastructure heavily damaged by four years of civil war.
Even before the recent quake, the humanitarian crisis in the country was severe, with the persistent, multi-sided conflict displacing 3.5 million people, according to the UN.
The UN said Friday that since the earthquake, the junta continued to conduct dozens of attacks against rebel groups, including at least 16 since Wednesday when the military government announced a temporary ceasefire.
Fletcher held discussions with the foreign ministers of Thailand and Malaysia on Saturday for what he called a “practical meeting” centered on “strong, coordinated, collective action” to save lives in Myanmar.
Aftershocks have also continued as long as a week after the initial tremors, with a 4.7-magnitude quake striking just south of Mandalay late Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Min Aung Hlaing was in Bangkok on Thursday and Friday, on a rare foreign trip to attend a regional summit that saw him meet with leaders including the prime ministers of Thailand and India.
The general’s attendance at the summit prompted protest, with demonstrators at the venue displaying a banner calling him a “murderer” and anti-junta groups condemning his inclusion.
