One week on, Nepal rules out finding more quake survivors
Father, friends of last missing Israeli Or Asraf search ruins of guesthouse he may have visited; death toll tops 6,600; IDF field hospital open for 4th day
Nepal’s government ruled out the possibility Saturday of finding more survivors buried in the rubble from last weekend’s massive earthquake as it announced the death toll had risen to 6,621.
“It has already been one week since the disaster,” home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal said.
“We are trying our best in rescue and relief work but now I don’t think that there is any possibility of survivors under the rubble.”
As well as updating the death toll, Dhakal put the number of injured at 14,023.
Meanwhile, the father of missing Israeli traveler Or Asraf and two of his friends searched the ruins of a guesthouse he is believed to have visited in Nepal but found nothing.
Patrick Asraf arrived in Nepal earlier this week to held with the search. Or Asraf was last heard from before last Saturday’s earthquake.
Israeli rescue teams were continuing their search for him on Saturday, aided by two helicopters
Asraf’s father said Friday that he was holding onto hope that his son was alive but urged decision makers to boost airborne search and rescue missions to help locate him.
He said he had been updated by Israeli teams in the country on their efforts to locate Or, and noted that the area in which his son might be missing had been considerably narrowed down.
Or Asraf, a veteran of last year’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip, has not been heard from since Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake. Asraf, hiking in the Lantang area north of the capital Kathmandu, had opted to walk ahead of the group he was with, unaccompanied, about an hour before the quake hit.
On Friday, 70 Israeli backpackers stranded in hard-to-reach areas were evacuated to safety by helicopters.
Meanwhile, Israel’s field hospital in Nepal continued operating Saturday, the fourth consecutive day after opening its doors. Medical staff have treated at least 300 patients and delivered at least three babies as of Friday night.
The quake, which was the deadliest in Nepal for more than 80 years, devastated vast swaths of the country when it erupted around midday last Saturday and reduced much of the capital Kathmandu to ruins.
While multiple teams of rescuers from more than 20 countries have been using sniffer dogs and heat-seeking equipment to find survivors in the rubble, no one has been pulled out alive since Thursday evening.
More than 100 people were also killed in neighboring India and China.
The Times of Israel Community.