101-year old man among 3 rescued after 8 days

Kathmandu: Several aftershocks kept Nepal on the edge on Sunday even as rescuers pulled out a 101-year-old man alive from the rubble of his home a week after the earthquake.

Meanwhile, the toll crossed 7,250, as the government warned that the figure might climb “much higher”.

Funchu Tamang was rescued on Saturday with minor injuries to his ankle and hand, after the 7.9-magnitude quake ripped through the country on April 25. “He was brought to the district hospital in a helicopter. His condition is stable,” local police officer Arun Kumar Singh told AFP from Nuwakot district, about 80 km northwest of Kathmandu. 

Police also pulled three women alive from under the rubble on Sunday in Sindhupalchowk, one of the worst-hit districts, although it was not immediately known how long they had been trapped. The rescues were rare good news for the country after officials on Saturday ruled out finding more survivors in the ruins and the focus shifted to



trying to deliver aid to thousands in remote Himalayan areas.

Fresh aftershocks, including one measuring 4.3 on the Richter Scale, sent a new wave of panic among people, most of whom have been staying in the open battling bad weather and scarce food and water supplies

Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said the toll was likely to jump once relief teams reached mountain villages flattened by the quake. “There are still villages where we know that all houses have been destroyed, but have not yet been able to reach,” he said in a statement. 

“The aftershocks have not receded and we expect the final casualty numbers to climb much higher,” he said and appealed for hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign donations to help rebuild the country. 

Although teams of rescuers from more than 20 countries have been using sniffer dogs and heat-seeking equipment to find survivors, no one has been pulled out alive in Kathmandu since Thursday evening.