India-Nepal quake toll crosses 100

This handout photo shows General Secretary of India's Congress Party Rahul Gandhi meets with locals in Lumsey on the outskirts of Gangtok yesterday. Gandhi flew to the disaster zone to see the rescue and aid programme.Photo: AFP

The death toll from the weekend earthquake in the Himalayas crossed 100 yesterday as rescue workers struggled to reach remote villages and helicopters airlifted the injured and stranded.
Sunday's 6.9-magnitude quake struck the border of India's northeastern state of Sikkim and Nepal, bringing destruction to towns and villages on both sides as well as in southern Tibet and the tiny kingdom of Bhutan.
From a helipad in Mangan in northern Sikkim, military and private helicopters flew regular sorties, taking food and medical supplies to outlying villages and bringing back injured survivors and a number of foreign tourists.
In the state capital Gangtok, 70 kilometres southeast of the epicentre, Chief Minister Pawan Chamling confirmed 68 deaths in Sikkim and said there was still no contact with a number of villages in the quake zone.
Rescue efforts began in earnest after emergency teams and relief workers spent two days battling heavy rains, damaged roads and landslides to reach the worst-affected areas.
SK Pradhan, the district magistrate of Chungtang, close to the epicentre, said he saw signs of badly damaged villages as he flew over the sparsely populated area.
"We could see bodies lying in the debris, but for now our priority is to evacuate the injured and then we will take stock of the dead," he said.
"We are still not able to contact many remote villages."
Doctors at Mangan district hospital said most of the seriously injured had badly crushed limbs and bodies after being caught in rockfalls or building collapses.
A company building a huge hydroelectric plant in Chungtang said 18 of its employees had been killed.
In Mangan, relatives of people living in and around the epicentre gathered in groups, sharing what little information they could glean about the fate of their family members.
Most had heard nothing from their families since the quake hit on Sunday evening.
In Nepal, eight people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged in the east of the country, where rescuers faced the same problems as their Indian counterparts with rains and mudslides blocking routes to the affected areas.
Eighteen other people died in the Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal, while China's official Xinhua news agency said seven people had been killed in southern Tibet, near the border with Sikkim.