Harikot:Hundreds of Nepali troops were searching for a missing US Marines helicopter with eight people on board on Wednesday, a day after the second powerful earthquake in less than three weeks killed scores and sent panicked residents into the street.
The Himalayan nation is still reeling from a devastating quake measuring 7.8 last month that killed more than 8,000 people and injured close to 20,000. The US helicopter was delivering aid in Dolakha, one of the hardest-hit areas from the April 25 quake, on Tuesday when it went missing with six Marines and two Nepali troops on board.
The Marine Corps UH-1Y Huey helicopter lost radio contact after its crew was heard talking about fuel problems. A Nepali military official said it appeared the helicopter might have come down in one of the rivers that snake through valleys in the district of Dolakha east of the capital, Kathmandu.
Six other helicopters joined hundreds of ground troops in the search for the missing aircraft. “The info we have is that it is down in one of the rivers, but none of the choppers has seen it yet,” Major Rajan Dahal, second-in-command of the Barda Bahadur Battalion, told Reuters in the district capital, Charikot.
“There are 400-plus of our ground troops looking for it also. By this evening, we might get it,” he said. Nepal Home Ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dhal said no trace of the missing helicopter had been found but she feared the search was diverting resources from relief and rescue work. “The work of sending relief and rescuing the injured people to hospitals has been delayed due to this,” she told Reuters.
