‘Nepal must learn a lesson from this’

Shell-shocked and sleeping in the streets, tens of thousands of Nepalese braced against terrifying aftershocks yesterday while digging for survivors in the devastation wrought a day earlier by a massive earthquake that ripped across this Himalayan nation and killed more than 2,500 people.

Acrid, white smoke rose above the nation’s most revered Hindu temple, where dozens of bodies were being cremated at any given time.

Aid groups received the first word from remote mountain villages — reports that suggested many communities perched on mountainsides were devastated or struggling to cope.