Tag Archives: Nepal

Nepal rattled by a 5.6 and a few days later a 5.2

Nepal-Earthquake

Important Takeaways:

  • Nepal hit by new earthquakes days after temblor kills more than 150
  • Two significant earthquakes jolted Nepal on Monday, just three days after a powerful temblor killed more than 150 people in the Himalayan nation. A magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck Nepal on Monday, centered in the Jajarkot district about 250 miles northeast of the capital, Kathmandu, which was hit hard by the magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Friday
  • At least 153 people were killed by that first quake, according to the latest official figures from Nepalese authorities on Monday, which was a slightly lower toll than provided over the weekend. More than 339 people were also injured.
  • A 4.5-magnitude aftershock hit the western part of the country just nine minutes after the earthquake on Monday, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said. At least three people sustained minor injuries but there were no reports of any deaths from the Monday temblors, according to Jajarkot police official Satosh Rokka.
  • Earthquakes are common in mountainous Nepal, but Friday’s quake was the deadliest since a 7.8 magnitude temblor struck in 2015, killing about 9,000 people and damaging about a million buildings.

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Late monsoon floods kill more than 150 in India and Nepal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -More than 150 people have died in flooding across India and Nepal in recent days, as heavy late monsoon rains triggered flash floods, destroyed homes, crops and infrastructure and left thousands stranded.

The north Indian state of Uttarakhand has been especially badly hit, with 48 confirmed deaths, SA Murugesan, secretary of the state’s disaster management department, told Reuters.

In Nainital, a popular tourist destination in the Himalayan state, the town’s main lake broke its banks, submerging the main thoroughfare and damaging bridges and rail tracks.

In nearby Chamoli district, rescuers from India’s paramilitary National Disaster Response Force continued to search debris following landslides caused by the heavy rains.

India’s federal interior minister Amit Shah surveyed badly hit areas on Thursday.

“Crops and homes have been wiped out, which is a severe blow to families already grappling with the devastating fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Azmat Ulla, a senior official at the International Federation of Red Crescent Societies.

“The people of Nepal and India are sandwiched between the pandemic and worsening climate disasters, heavily impacting millions of lives and livelihoods.”

Some 42 people have died in the last week in the southern Indian state of Kerala, according to a statement from the chief minister’s office.

In neighboring Nepal, at least 77 people have died.

India’s annual monsoon rains usually run from June to September.

(Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Jose Devasia in Kochi, Writing by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie)

Nepal floods and landslides kill at least 77

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) -The death toll after three days of heavy rain in Nepal triggered landslides and flash floods rose to 77 on Wednesday after rescuers recovered 34 more bodies, authorities said.

Twenty-four deaths have been reported in the Panchthar district of east Nepal bordering India, 13 in neighboring Ilam and 12 in Doti in west Nepal, interior ministry official Dil Kumar Tamang said. Others died elsewhere in west Nepal.

The ministry said 22 people were injured and 26 were missing.

Authorities said the government would provide $1,700 as relief to the families of each dead victim and free treatment for the injured.

About 350 km (220 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, persistent heavy rains were hampering efforts to reach Seti, a village in west Nepal where 60 people have been marooned by floods for two days.

“Rescuers were unable to reach the village due to bad weather and continuous rains yesterday. Rescue efforts are continuing today,” Police spokesman Basanta Kunwar told Reuters.

Television channels showed rice paddy crops submerged or washed away, and rivers sweeping away bridges, roads, houses and the runway of an airport in the city of Biratnagar.

Flash floods and landslides are common in Nepal during the monsoon season from mid-June through September.

Authorities have warned of more rain in the next few days.

There are “chances of heavy rainfall in some places and light to moderate snowfall” in the eastern mountainous areas, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology said in a forecast for the next two days.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Giles Elgood)

Nepal worries future coronavirus wave will hit children hard

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepal asked its hospitals on Friday to reserve beds for children for fear another surge in coronavirus infections will hit them hard, something officials in neighboring India are also preparing for.

The move came as the government approved for emergency use the COVID-19 vaccine made by Sinovac Biotech of China.

Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s government has been criticized by experts for its handling of the ongoing second wave in Nepal, which has led to an acute shortage of oxygen, hospital beds and medicines.

“Hospitals and medical institutions must set aside at least 20% of beds for children, who are likely to suffer the most in the potential third and fourth waves of coronavirus,” the Ministry of Health and Population said in a statement.

“Hospitals must also ensure the availability of enough oxygen.”

Daily infections in the Himalayan nation are hovering around 5,000 after hitting a peak of more than 9,000 in early May. Nepal had reported fewer than 100 daily cases in March. It has reported 581,560 infections in total and 7,731 deaths.

Donors have rushed aid including oxygen, protective gear, drugs and face masks to the country, which is also struggling to secure vaccines after neighboring India stopped exports to meet its local demand.

Santosh K.C., a spokesman for the Department of Drug Administration, said “conditional permission for the emergency use” had been given for the coronavirus vaccine (Corona Vac) made by Sinovac Biotech of China, the fifth shot to be approved by Nepal.

Earlier it had approved two Indian-made vaccines – AstraZeneca’s and COVAXIN – China’s Shinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V for emergency use in the Himalayan nation.

Nepal has provided at least 3.1 million vaccinations to its people so far.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

China to gift 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Nepal

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – China will provide 1 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to Nepal, its ambassador said on Wednesday, as authorities in the Himalayan country scramble to secure shots amid a surge in infections that has overwhelmed its rickety health system.

The announcement was made during a telephone conversation between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Nepali counterpart Bidya Devi Bhandari on Wednesday, China’s ambassador Hou Yanqi said in a Twitter post.

In March, China provided 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine to Nepal, which also received a million shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine as gift from India.

Nepal began its vaccination drive in January but the campaign has been suspended because of the lack of vaccines after New Delhi said it was unable to provide additional shots due to its domestic needs.

China and India jostle for influence in Nepal, a natural buffer between the Asian giants, and both have been giving away COVID-19 vaccines as part of a diplomatic push to strengthen ties with neighbors and countries further afield.

Neither Chinese ambassador Hou nor Nepal’s foreign minister, Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, gave a timeframe for delivery of the latest donation of vaccines.

Nepal has been hit by a sharp surge in COVID-19 cases since early April. The average daily rise in infections is now about 8,000, compared with fewer than 200 a day two months ago, leaving hospital beds, oxygen and medicines in short supply.

In all, the country has reported 535,525 cases and 6,845 deaths from COVID-19, according to government data.

Nepal has also procured 1 million shots of vaccine in a commercial deal with the Serum Institute of India, in addition to 348,000 jabs it received under the COVAX initiative.

The country has administered at least 2,706,835 doses, enough to have vaccinated about 4.7% of the population.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Devjyot Ghoshal and Alex Richardson)

Pandemic pace slows worldwide except for southeast Asia, eastern Mediterranean: WHO

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The COVID-19 pandemic is still expanding, but the rise in cases and deaths has slowed globally, except for southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean regions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

In its latest epidemiological update, issued on Monday night, it said that the Americas remains the hardest-hit region, accounting for half of newly reported cases and 62% of the 39,240 deaths worldwide in the past week.

More than 23.65 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally and 811,895​ have died, according to a Reuters tally on Tuesday.

“Over 1.7 million new COVID-19 cases and 39,000 new deaths were reported to WHO for the week ending 23 August, a 4% decrease in the number of cases and (a 12% decrease) in the number of deaths compared to the previous week,” the WHO said.

Southeast Asia, the second most affected region, reported a jump accounting for 28% of new cases and 15% of deaths, it said. India continues to report the majority of cases, but the virus is also spreading rapidly in Nepal.

In WHO’s eastern Mediterranean region, the number of reported cases rose by 4%, but the number of reported deaths has consistently dropped over the last six weeks, the WHO said. Lebanon, Tunisia and Jordan reported the highest increase in cases compared to the previous week.

The number of cases and deaths reported across Africa decreased by 8% and 11% respectively in the past week, “primarily due to a decrease in cases reported in Algeria, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa”, it said.

“In the European region, the number of cases reported has consistently increased over the last three weeks,” it said. “However, only a slight decrease (1%) was reported in the most recent week, and the number of deaths have continued to decrease across the region.”

In WHO’s western Pacific region, the number of new cases dropped by 5%, driven by less spread in Japan, Australia, Singapore, China and Vietnam. South Korea reported an 180% jump in cases, “mainly due to an increase in cases associated with religious gatherings”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Giles Elgood)

‘Big Sisters’ ride to rescue of Nepali child brides

By Annie Banerji

SURKHET, Nepal (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – If it wasn’t for her self-annointed “Big Sister”, Punam Pun Magar would have quit school at 14 to marry a man nearly twice her age, bear him babies and tend house.

Now she’s hoping to become a lawyer.

Two in five Nepalese girls just like Magar marry before they turn 18: one of the highest rates in the world, despite child marriage being illegal in the impoverished Himalayan country.

The bad times for Magar began when both her parents died and her aunt’s family felt burdened, saying she must pay her way.

“They told me not to go to school and do household chores. After a point, they wanted to get rid of me … so they started planning my marriage to a 26-year-old man,” Magar said as tears welled up.

That’s when Big Sister Krishna Paudel rode to her rescue, snatching her from a potential life of illiteracy, poverty and ill health: common fallout of so many child marriages in Nepal.

Hundreds of Big Sisters – many of them former child brides themselves – have volunteered to counsel teenaged girls like Magar, as well as their families and communities, on the impact of marrying young, using their own stories as cautionary tales.

“When I met her, I told her about child marriage – the legal consequences, the social fallout, everything. Since then, I’ve seen phenomenal change in her. That knowledge empowered her and now she’s headed towards a bright future,” said Paudel.

The legal age of marriage in Nepal is 20 for men and women alike. Yet child marriage remains deeply rooted in conservative, mainly Hindu Nepal, where many parents marry off their teenaged daughters to boost the wider family finances.

This drives a vicious cycle of ill health, malnutrition and ignorance, since a child bride is more likely to leave school and experience problems in pregnancy or birth, say campaigners.

Some also face domestic and sexual abuse.

Nepal has the third highest child marriage prevalence in South Asia, according to the United Nations.

The ‘Sisters for Sisters’ programme was introduced as part of a government drive to end child marriages in Nepal by 2030.

The Sisters’ top job – to keep girls in school.

Activists say dropout rates rise when girls are co-opted into household chores, pushed into early marriage or held back by discrimination and deep-seated taboos over periods.

So when 25-year-old Paudel noticed Magar’s attendance dipping, she tracked her down and weighed in with advice – and kept dishing out the same message over many months.

The wedding was called off; Magar went back to school.

“Had it not been for my Big Sister, I would have had three or four children by now, and they would be studying here instead of me,” said Magar, 17, at her government-run school in western Nepal’s Surkhet district.

SAVING LIVES

A wife at 15 then a mother at 17, Big Sister Rachana Bantha said she had grappled with poor health and poverty since her forced marriage a decade ago.

“I felt like killing myself. I remember how horrible it all was – but that is what motivates me every day to help these girls. They should not have to go through what I did,” Bantha told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“I can save their lives,” she said, wearing the Big Sisters’ uniform of pink tunic and black pleated trousers.

Bantha said she had stopped at least a dozen child marriages in the past four years.

But the crime remains widespread, said Khagendra Bahadur Ruchal, an administrative official at Surkhet district.

He blamed poverty and illiteracy, as well as parents hoping to stop the taboo of unmarried sex and pregnancy.

The main enemy, however, is custom.

“It is ingrained in our society’s fabric. It is considered the norm. Even politicians and teachers are marrying their children off in some places. If they don’t practice what they preach, how can we expect any change?” he said.

Teenagers are also eloping more often, a trend campaigners attribute to better access to mobile phones and the internet. As for the cause, they said some girls are fleeing poverty or forced marriage, others chase independence and sexual freedom.

Ruchal the official said it was important to normalise live-in relationships so teenagers did not feel compelled to marry.

Nepal should also give girls some sort of incentive to stay in school so they aspire to a career of their own, said Sumnima Tuladhar of the Kathmandu-based child rights group CWIN Nepal.

“They need to be excited about education. They don’t see a future after finishing school. We have to create a society where young people have something more than marriage to look forward to,” she said.

STIGMA

Poverty is the main problem with girls routinely pushed into domestic work in a country where one in five survives on less than $1.25 a day, said Ananda Paudel of development charity VSO, which is behind the Sisters for Sister project.

The programme began in 2017 and has boosted girls’ confidence along with their school attendance, said Paudel.

“They are so empowered. Had it not been for this, we cannot imagine where they would have been right now. How many would have disappeared from the system, the society,” he said.

And the results already show.

Magar – alert in her blue school uniform – seems worlds away from the 14-year-old orphan who came so close to dropping out.

“I’m going to study to become a lawyer so that I can help women. They face so much discrimination and do not find legal assistance,” she said. “I want to help them give a voice.”

(Reporting by Annie Banerji @anniebanerji, Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, gender equality, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

Severe thunderstorm in Nepal leaves 25 dead, hundreds injured

Villagers stand near the debris of their houses after it was hit by the storm in Bara district, Nepal April 1, 2019. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Over two dozen people were killed in a severe thunderstorm that swept through parts of southern Nepal late on Sunday and hundreds more were injured, police and officials said.

Nepal’s Prime Minster K.P. Sharma Oli in a tweet said 25 people had been killed, and around 400 were injured.

“Helicopters have been kept ready for immediate rescue and relief,” Oli said in his post. He offered condolences to the families of the victims.

Rajesh Paudel, the top bureaucrat of Bara district, where the storm hit, said the death toll may increase as rescuers were still trying to reach many of those affected. 

Bara is located about 62 km (39 miles) south of Kathmandu and borders India’s eastern state of Bihar.

Pre-monsoon thunderstorms are common in Nepal during the spring season but are rarely of an intensity that causes high casualties.

Police officer Sanu Ram Bhattarai said rescue teams had been dispatched to the affected villages, but reaching the victims was difficult at night.

Television channels said the storm and accompanying heavy rainfall, uprooted trees and electric and telephone poles, crushing some people to death.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Nepal bank latest victim in heists targeting SWIFT system

Nepal bank latest victim in heists targeting SWIFT system

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – A bank in Nepal is the latest victim in a string of cyber heists targeting the global SWIFT bank messaging system, though most of the stolen funds have been recovered, two officials involved in the investigation confirmed on Tuesday.

Hackers last month made about $4.4 million in fraudulent transfers from Kathmandu-based NIC Asia Bank to countries including Britain, China, Japan, Singapore and the United States when the bank was closed for annual festival holidays, according to Nepal media reports.

All but $580,000 of the funds were recovered after Nepal asked other nations to block release of the stolen money, Chinta Mani Shivakoti, deputy governor of the Central Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), told Reuters.

Brussels-based SWIFT said last month that security controls instituted after last year’s $81 million theft from Bangladesh’s central bank helped thwart some recent hacking attempts, but it warned that cyber criminals continue to target SWIFT customers.

SWIFT or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is a co-operative owned by its user banks. It declined to comment on the NIC Asia Bank hack, saying it does not discuss specific users.

Representatives with NIC Asia Bank, one of dozens of private banks in Nepal, were not available for comment.

The chief of Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau, Pushkar Karki, confirmed to Reuters that his agency was investigating the theft.

KPMG is also involved in the investigation, according to Nepali media reports. KPMG representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

The central bank intends to release guidelines on how to thwart such incidents after investigations are completed, according to Shivakoti.

“The incident showed there are some weaknesses with the IT department of the bank,” Shivakoti said.

SWIFT said in a statement on Tuesday that it offers assistance to banks when it learns of potential fraud cases, then shares relevant information with other clients on an anonymous basis.

“This preserves confidentiality, whilst assisting other SWIFT users to take appropriate measures to protect themselves,” it said.

“We have no indication that our network and core messaging services have been compromised,” SWIFT added.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma, additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore and Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Matthew Lewis)

Monsoon floods kill more than 200 people across South Asia

Monsoon floods kill more than 200 people across South Asia

By Gopal Sharma and Ruma Paul

KATHMANDU/DHAKA (Reuters) – Heavy monsoon rains in Nepal, Bangladesh and India have killed more than 200 people in the last week, officials said on Tuesday, as rescue workers rushed to help those stranded by floodwaters.

In Nepal, the death toll from flash floods and landslides rose to 115, with 38 people missing. Relief workers said 26 of Nepal’s 75 districts were either submerged or had been hit by landslides.

Television pictures showed people wading through chest-deep water carrying belongings and livestock.

“We will now focus more on rescue of those trapped in floods and relief distribution. People have nothing to eat, no clothes. So we have to provide them something to eat and save their lives,” said Nepali police spokesman Pushkar Karki.

Floods in north Bangladesh have killed at least 39 people in the last few days and affected more than 500,000, many of them fleeing their homes to shelter in camps, officials said.

The situation could get worse as swollen rivers carry rainwater from neighboring India downstream into the low-lying and densely populated country, they said.

In the northern Indian state of Bihar, floods have killed 56 people since Sunday and affected more than six million, said Anirudh Kumar, additional secretary in the state Disaster Management Department.

More than two million people have been evacuated from their homes, Kumar told Reuters, and national disaster relief force teams have been airlifted in to help.

Flooding has also killed at least 15 people in the northeastern state of Assam.

India’s meteorological department is forecasting more heavy rain on Wednesday.

Monsoon rains start in June and continue through September. They are vital for farmers in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh but cause loss of life and property damage every year.

(Additional reporting and writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Andrew Roche)