Reuters/Kathmandu

Hundreds cheered as rescuers toiling amid rubble left by Nepal’s earthquake pulled a boy and a woman to safety yesterday after they had been trapped for five days.
A 23-year-old maid, Krishna Devi Khadka, was found lying along with the bodies of three other people, police said.
Officials said the chances of finding more survivors were fading as the death toll reached 5,858. But Nepal’s Armed Police Force managed to save 15-year-old Pema Lama from the collapsed ruins of Kathmandu’s Hilton Hotel.
“I saw the police drilling for four hours to remove mounds of debris before they could pull him out,” said Ambar Giri, a medical worker at the scene.
Away from the capital, aid was finally reaching some of Nepal’s remote towns and villages nestled among mountains and foothills, where the extent of the damage and loss of life has yet to be properly assessed.
From an army helicopter flying from Chautara, northeast of Kathmandu, towards the Tibet border, a Reuters witness estimated 70 to 80% of buildings had been severely damaged.
In a remote village, an army medical team treated injured locals and soldiers supervised the unloading of goods on a muddy expanse of ground next to a school that served as a helipad.
In Chautara itself, a few people cleared rubble from the upper floors of their houses and mixed cement by the roadside, as the long rebuilding process began.
Many Nepalis have been sleeping in the open since Saturday’s quake. According to the United Nations, 600,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged.
It said eight million people had been affected, with at least 2mn in need of tents, water, food and medicines over the next three months.
An official from Nepal’s home ministry said the number of confirmed deaths from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake had risen to 5,858 by yesterday afternoon, and almost 13,800 were injured.
Anger over the pace of the rescue has flared in some areas, with Nepalis accusing the government of being too slow to distribute international aid that flooded into the country.
It has yet to reach many in need, particularly in areas hard to reach given the quake damage and poor weather.
Tensions between foreigners and Nepalis desperate to be evacuated have also surfaced. In Langtang valley, where 150 people are feared trapped, a helicopter pilot was taken hostage by locals demanding to be evacuated first, one report said.
In Ashrang village in Gorkha, one of the worst-hit districts about four hours by road west of Kathmandu, hundreds of Nepali villagers were living outdoors with little food and water despite boxes of biscuits, juices and sacks of rice and wheat being stored in a nearby government office.
Police commandos shut the high iron gates of the building, refusing people access while they counted the relief supplies.
“We told them we can manage without their help,” said Mohamed Ishaq, a school teacher, who had been offered four plastic sheets. “It is as if we are doing everything on our own, feeding our people, tending to the sick.”
But district facilitator Dipendra Shrestha said the local administration was doing what it could to get aid to victims and help foreign teams offering rescue and medical support.
“Owners are refusing to rent out vehicles,” he said. “We only have 20 at the moment. We need many more.”
A German search and rescue team in the area was shifting focus to medical work, because villagers had managed to dig bodies and survivors from the remains of mud and brick homes themselves.
In another tale of escape, a young girl worshipped by many as a living goddess survived Saturday’s earthquake near one of the royal palaces in Kathmandu where most other buildings were flattened.
“Her temple stands intact because of her divine powers,” Pratap Man Shakya, the girl’s father, told Reuters.
Nepal is appealing to foreign governments for more helicopters. There are currently about 20 Nepali army, private and Indian army helicopters involved in rescue operations, according to Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, a home ministry official.
China is expected to send helicopters, he said.
Prime minister Sushil Koirala told Reuters earlier this week the death toll from the quake could reach 10,000.
That would surpass the 8,500 who died in a 1934 earthquake, the last disaster on this scale to hit the nation of 28mn people sandwiched between India and China.
In Kathmandu and other cities, hospitals overflowed with injured, with many being treated out in the open or not at all.
“The new waves of patients are those who survived the quake, but are sick because they were living in the open and drinking contaminated water,” said Binay Pandey, a doctor at the government-run Bir Hospital in the capital.
The Red Cross warned yesterday that nearly all homes had been wiped out in some towns and villages near the epicentre of Nepal’s devastating earthquake.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said they remained “extremely concerned” about the welfare of hundreds of thousands of people in Nepal, five days after a massive earthquake that killed nearly 6,000 people.
In areas outside the Kathmandu Valley, the fate of many people remains unknown, the organisation said.
“Six Red Cross assessment teams are reporting that some towns and villages in the worst-affected districts close to the epicentre have suffered almost total devastation,” it said in a statement.
“Local residents are in a desperate situation,” it added.
The devastation appeared particularly dire in the Sindupalchowk region, a mountainous area northeast of Kathmandu, which was becoming a major focus of international relief efforts.
“One of our teams that returned from Chautara in Sindupalchowk district reported that 90% of the homes are destroyed,” said Jagan Chapagain, head of IFRC’s Asia Pacific division.
“The hospital has collapsed, and people are digging through the rubble with their hands in the hope that they might find family members who are still alive,” he said in a statement.
“We can expect the situation to be the same if not worse in many other places where aid has not yet been delivered,” he added.
IFRC said up to 40,000 homes were estimated to have been destroyed in Sindupalchowk, and the World Health Organization said Thursday that some 1,400 people had been killed there.
With so many families in need, the Nepal Red Cross Society said it had almost exhausted its relief stocks which were sufficient for 19,000 families.
Yet getting more aid in through Kathmandu’s small international airport is expected to be a challenge, with UN agencies reporting that a number of aid flights have been delayed or turned back due to congestion.
IFRC expects its first two planeloads of fresh aid to arrive at the airport Friday, with stocks to serve 1,000 people and a 60-bed rapid deployment emergency hospital, but warned far more was needed.
In the meantime, Red Cross volunteers have been distributing tarpaulins in affected areas to shelter thousands of people who remain too afraid to return home because of aftershocks and damage to their homes.
The priority now, it said, was moving relief efforts to more remote areas.
“We know what the needs are, and Nepal Red Cross volunteers are ready in every district to distribute relief. The challenge now is bringing sufficient quantities into the country,” Chapagain said.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said yesterday that Nepal may be at risk of a food crisis following the devastating earthquake that struck the country on April 25.
The quake has left 3.5mn people in need of food assistance and might prevent farmers in affected areas from planting rice - Nepal’s staple food - until late 2016, thus jeopardising their incomes and national food supplies, the Rome-based agency warned.
“There is a critical window of opportunity to help crop producers plant in time to have a rice harvest this year and regain their self-sufficiency,” said Somsak Pipoppinyo, FAO Representative in Nepal.
“At the same time, we need to do all we can to preserve vital livestock assets which provide affected families with much needed income and nutrition,” he added. According to FAO, two-third of Nepalese rely on agriculture for their livelihood. FAO said $8mn are “urgently needed” to help Nepalese farmers. They are part of the $415mn emergency funding appeal that UN agencies and partners have launched for post-quake assistance.