This Article is From Apr 28, 2015

Amid Mass Cremations in Nepal, a Village Comes Out for 6 of a Family from Singapore

Over 300 people have been cremated at the temple since Tuesday.

Among hundreds of earthquake victims cremated today in the ghats near the famous Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, were six of a family who lived in Singapore and had come visiting their village in Nepal. The entire village turned up for the last rites.

With their vacation nearing an end, the family was visiting the historic Dharara tower in old Kathmandu, when the deadly earthquake struck, bringing the structure down, a family friend said, overcome with emotion and barely audible over the wailing of grief-torn relatives.      

Not far, a man waited to perform the last rites for his seven-year-old daughter, snatched away by the quake.

In devastated Nepal, there is a shortage not just of food, medicine, water and fuel, but even space for cremation.

On the ghats of the Bagmati river, people jostled for space to cremate their dead. Others waited in queues for their turn to perform last rites. As pyres burnt in rows, many had to settle for performing last rites on make-shift funeral grounds.  

Officials told NDTV that 300 people had been cremated since Tuesday morning at the Pashupatinath temple, considered the holiest of holy by the Nepalese. An average 500 bodies had been brought in each day for cremation since the earthquake, they said, and worried that the number would go up with hope of rescuing many more people from rubble now fading with time.

The toll in Saturday's earthquake has risen to 4,358, as per Nepal Home Ministry figures. Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said the number could go up to 10,000. The Kathmandu Valley bore the brunt of the quake.

The quake flattened homes and buildings and the dozens of aftershocks that followed have forced people to live in the open for the last three days under plastic tents barely shielding them from the rain that has pounded the city.
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