Hundreds of paramilitary soldiers and local police cleared away concrete slabs, bricks and mud to rescue scores of people trapped under the debris of houses that collapsed after the 6.9-magnitude quake struck the mountainous Himalayan region on Sunday evening.
At least 30 people died in the northeastern state of Sikkim, where the quake was centered near India's border with Nepal, officials said.
Paramilitary soldiers pulled out 23 bodies and located seven others buried under mounds of concrete in Gangtok, Sikkim's capital, said police Chief Jasbir Singh. At least 50 people, some with serious injuries, were hospitalised, he said.
Another 11 people were killed in the neighbouring Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal. Seven people died in Nepal, and China's official Xinhua news agency reported seven deaths in Tibet.
Cordoned off
Most of the deaths occurred when houses, already weakened from recent monsoon rains, collapsed due to the force of the quake.
Heavy rains and landslides hampered rescue workers as they worked through the night to pull people from under the rubble, Singh said.
By midday yesterday, workers had managed to clear the debris of landslides from one lane of the main highway connecting Sikkim, and an initial convoy of 75 paramilitary soldiers had started moving towards Mangan, the village closest to the quake's epicentre, officials said. In Gangtok, police cordoned off the office of the state's top elected official after the building was severely damaged in the quake, Singh said.
Nepal's government said seven people died there, including two men and a child who were killed when a brick wall toppled outside the British Embassy in the capital, Kathmandu. Nearly 70 people were injured, some of them seriously, and were in hospitals across Nepal.
In Kathmandu, members of parliament who were debating the national budget ran out of the assembly hall into a parking area. They returned 15 minutes later and resumed their session.
TV broadcasters showed footage of buckled buildings, cracked pavements and two collapsed major roads in Gangtok, 68km southeast of the quake's epicentre near the border with Nepal. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police said two of its buildings had collapsed in Gangtok. In India's West Bengal state, utility workers toiled through the night to restore power to a large swathe of the state which plunged into darkness after power lines were snapped by the quake.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned the National Disaster Management Authority for an emergency meeting and ordered rescue teams airlifted.
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![[JUGRAJ SINGH]](https://www.unp.me/data/avatars/s/123/123038.jpg?1591210006){kind=avatar}