At least 128 people died and dozens were injured in an earthquake that shook northwest Nepal on Friday, authorities said in a new report this Saturday.
Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center initially said the quake had a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale, but the U.S. Geological Survey later established a magnitude of 5.6.
A representative of the local administration in the Jajarkot district, near the epicenter and about 400 kilometers northeast of the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, said the death toll is expected to rise, after Nepalese authorities indicated in a previous assessment 69 deaths.
In the Jajarkot district there were 92 dead and 55 injured, according to Nepalese police spokesman Kuber Kadayat. In the neighboring district of Rukum, at least 36 people were killed and another 85 injured.
Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal has already expressed “deep sadness at the human and material damage caused by the earthquake.”
Earthquakes are common in Nepal, which sits on a major fault line where the Indian tectonic plate pushes against the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayas.
In November 2022, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake killed six people in Doti district near Jajarkot.
In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed about nine thousand people and damaged about one million structures.
Source: TSF
