Desperate Nepalese sleep in open as aftershocks spread fear
Thousands of desperate Nepalese spent another night in the open in the early hours of April 27, terrorized by strong aftershocks that continued to shake the country two days after a massive quake struck, killing almost 2,500 people.
Across the capital, Kathmandu, and beyond, exhausted families whose homes were either flattened or at risk of collapse laid mattresses out on streets and erected tents to shelter from rain. The sick and wounded also lay out in the open, unable to find beds in the city's overwhelmed hospitals.
Outside Kathmandu Medical College, surgeons set up an operating theatre inside a tent.
People queued for water dispensed from the back of trucks, while the few stores still open had next to nothing on their shelves. Crowds jostled at one pharmacy to snap up medicine.
High in the Himalayas, hundreds of foreign and Nepalese climbers remained trapped after a huge avalanche killed 17 people in the worst single disaster to hit Mount Everest.
A total of 2,460 people were confirmed killed in the 7.9 magnitude quake, making it the worst such disaster to hit Nepal since 1934 when 8,500 died. Thousands more were injured.
The death toll is likely to climb as rescue workers struggle to reach remote regions in the impoverished, mountainous country of 28 million people and as bodies still buried under rubble are recovered.
With so many people sleeping in the open with no power or water and downpours forecast, fears mounted of major food and water shortages. Across the country, hundreds of villages have been left to fend for themselves.