Himalayan quake death toll hits 50

Rescue workers used shovels and their bare hands to pull bodies from the debris of collapsed buildings today, as the death toll from an earthquake which hit north-east India, Nepal and Tibet rose to 50.

At least 25 people died in the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim after the 6.9 magnitude quake hit the region yesterday evening, police said.

Paramilitary soldiers had pulled out 18 bodies and located seven others buried under mounds of concrete in Gangtok, Sikkim’s capital, said police Chief Jasbir Singh.

Another 11 people were killed the neighbouring Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal. Seven people died in Nepal and China’s official Xinhua news agency reported seven deaths from Tibet.

Most of the deaths occurred when houses, already weakened by recent monsoon rains, collapsed due to the force of the quake, which was centred in Sikkim, near India’s border with Nepal.

Heavy rain and landslides hampered rescue workers as they worked through the night to pull people from under the rubble, Mr Singh said.

Much of the damage was not immediately known because the region is remote and sparsely populated.

Nepal's government said seven people died there, including two men and a child who were killed when a brick wall toppled outside the British Embassy in the capital, Katmandu.

Nearly 70 people were injured, some of them seriously, and were in hospitals across Nepal.

In Katmandu, members of parliament who were debating the national budget ran out of the assembly hall into a parking area. They returned 15 minutes later and resumed their session.

TV broadcasters showed footage of buckled buildings, cracked pavements and two major roads collapsed in Gangtok, 42 miles (68km) south-east of the quake’s epicentre near the border with Nepal. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police said two of its buildings had collapsed in Gangtok.

In India’s West Bengal state, utility workers toiled through the night to restore power to a large swathe of the state which plunged into darkness after power lines snapped during the quake.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned the National Disaster Management Authority for an emergency meeting and ordered that its rescue teams be airlifted to the worst hit areas of Sikkim.

The quake was also felt as far as the Indian capital, with New Delhi residents also rushing out of shaking buildings.

The quake caused some houses in China’s Himalayan region of Tibet to collapse and disrupted a border county’s telecommunications services, Xinhua said.

There were at least two aftershocks of magnitude 6.1 and 5.3, Indian seismology official RS Dattatreyan said. He warned that more aftershocks were possible.

The region has been hit by major earthquakes in the past, including in 1950 and 1897.