KATHMANDU An Indian army mountaineering team found 18 bodies on Mount Everest on Saturday, an army spokesman said, after a massive earthquake in Nepal unleashed an avalanche on the world's tallest mountain at the start of the main climbing season. 
 
 Nepal's Tourism Ministry could only confirm 10 deaths, but spokesman Gyanendra Shrestha said the death toll could rise, and that the avalanche had buried part of the base camp. He said two tents at the camp had been filled with the injured. 
 
 One of those killed was Dan Fredinburg, a Google engineer based in California. He died as a result of head injuries when the avalanche hit, according to a statement from the mountaineering company that had taken him to base camp."We pray too for all those who have lost their lives in one of the greatest tragedies ever to hit this Himalayan nation," Jagged Globe said.Tourism ministry officials estimated that at least 1,000 climbers, including about 400 foreigners, had been at base camp or on Everest when the earthquake struck. 
 
 April is one of the most popular times to scale the 8,850-metre (29,035 foot) peak before rain and clouds cloak it at the end of May. Almost exactly a year ago, an avalanche killed 16 Nepali guides in what was the single deadliest day on the mountain. 
 
 Saturday's 7.9-magnitude quake was the strongest to hit Nepal for 81 years. It also shook neighboring India, China and Bangladesh. Early on Sunday, the official death toll stood at more than 1,300 people in Nepal.Romanian climber Alex Gavan made a desperate appeal for a helicopter to fly in and evacuate climbers: "Many dead. Much more badly injured. More to die if not heli asap." 
 
 Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, a Danish climber, said about 40 people were being treated in a makeshift hospital at a tent at base camp. He said many of those injured had back injuries from being hit by rocks and ice when running from the avalanche.The poor visibility after the first avalanche meant it was "difficult to see the following avalanches, and there are so many - maybe one every 5 min. - that I have stopped counting", Pedersen said on Facebook. 
 
 Mohan Krishna Sapkota, joint secretary in the Nepalese tourism ministry, said the government was struggling to assess the damage on Everest because of poor phone coverage."The trekkers are scattered all around the base camp and some had even trekked further up," Sapkota said. "It is almost impossible to get in touch with anyone." 
 
 Choti Sherpa, who works at the Everest Summiteers Association, said she had been unable to call her family and colleagues on the mountain. "Everyone is trying to contact each other, but we can’t," she said. "We are all very worried." 
 
 Last year's tragedy prompted the Sherpa guides to complain that their safety was being neglected, but there were no immediate recriminations on Saturday. 
 
 "This will definitely have some impact on climbing activity, but this is a natural disaster. No one can do anything," said Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. At the Annapurna mountain range, where scores were killed in the nation's worst trekking accident last year, many hikers were stranded after the earthquake, according to messages on social media, but no fatalities had been reported. 
 
 Stan Adhikari, who runs the Mountain House lodge in Pokhara near the mountain range, said the city had escaped the worst of the damage. "There hasn't been much damage," Adhikari said. 
 
 He said there were about two dozen guests at his lodge, including people from Europe, the United States and China. The road from Pokhara to Kathmandu was not passable but he hoped it would open on Sunday. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Rupam Jain Nair; Writing by Andrew MacAskill and Paritosh Bansal; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Mark Bendeich) ||||| CLOSE A powerful earthquake struck Nepal Saturday, killing at least 1,180 people and triggering a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest. It was the worst quake to hit Nepal in decades. (April 25) AP 
 
 In this photo provided by Azim Afif, shows a man approaching the scene after an avalanche triggered by a massive earthquake swept across Everest Base Camp, Nepal. (Photo: Azim Afif, AP) 
 
 A powerful magnitude-7.8 earthquake in Nepal sparked a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest on Saturday, killing at least 17 people on the mountain. At least 30 were injured. 
 
 Among the dead was Google engineer Dan Fredinburg. It was not immediately clear how many of the deaths were located at the base camp, where at least 30 tents were flattened when the avalanche plowed into part of the camp. The exact number of injured or missing was also unknown. 
 
 Base camp is where journalists, climbers and their families gather and get news to the world about developments at Everest, the world's highest mountain above sea level. 
 
 The disaster comes a little more than a year after another Everest avalanche killed 16 Sherpa guides, the highest death toll ever for an avalanche on the mountain. The guides protested the government's lack of protection for them by refusing to work, canceling the climbing season. 
 
 Hundreds of climbers make summit attempts on Everest each year. In 2013, 800 climbers reached the summit. 
 
 Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, a Dane who was climbing the Everest with a Belgian, Jelle Veyt, said on his Facebook page that they were at Khumbu Icefall, a rugged area of collapsed ice and snow close to base camp at 16,500 feet, when the earthquake hit. 
 
 He wrote on his Facebook page about one person with the most severe injuries who sustained many fractures. 
 
 "He was blown away by the avalanche and broke both legs. For the camps closer to where the avalanche hit, our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents," he wrote in English. "There is now a steady flow of people fleeing basecamp in hope of more security further down the mountain" 
 
 Veyt said on his Facebook page that he "ran for my life," and was fine. 
 
 At least one team of climbers on Everest appears to be safe after a few hours of anguish in which the expedition leader asked for prayers on social media in the wake of the massive quake that killed more than 1,400. 
 
 After some hours of silence and pleas from followers to post about the group's welfare, expedition leader Dan Mazur finally posted on Facebook at about 8 a.m. ET, "We felt the earthquake on the north side but have no damage and all are safe." 
 
 Mazur, a team leader for the groups Summit Climb and Summit Trek, based in England and Washington state, was leading a team of 10 up Everest. They were at Camp 1, about 3,000 feet above the base camp, when the quake hit. 
 
 The latest post ended what appeared to be a night of worry for the group's followers on social media as well as a woman identifying herself as Mazur's sister, who repeatedly asked if he was OK. 
 
 Earlier Saturday, Mazur was sending out messages via social media asking for prayers and saying damage from the earthquake on Everest was extensive. Mazur is best known for leading a 1993 expedition portrayed in the book Three Cups of Tea as well as the rescue of an Australian climber in 2006. 
 
 At about 4:30 a.m. ET, Mazur tweeted: "A massive earthquake just hit Everest. Basecamp has been severely damaged. Our team is caught in Camp 1. Please pray for everyone." 
 
 Camp 1, according to the MountEverest.net website, is a "vast, flat area of endless snow, deep crevasses and mountain walls frequently washed by avalanches." It is here that climbers catch their first glimpse of Everest, according to the site. Whiteout and crevasses are a frequent challenge. 
 
 At about 5:30 a.m., Mazur tweeted: "Aftershock! Everest team is in camp 1, hanging on. Icefall route destroyed." 
 
 Mazur, 54, is a native of Illinois and divides his time between Bristol, England, and Olympia, Wash. 
 
 Contributing: Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY; The Associated Press 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1GsHG78 ||||| Anger among survivors as food and water in short supply, while rescue teams warn they are yet to reached ‘flattened’ villages in remote regions 
 
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 Nepal earthquake: death toll could reach 10,000, says PM – live updates Read more 
 
 The death toll in Nepal’s earthquake could reach 10,000, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has said, as survivors’ despair turned to anger at the government’s slow response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country, with food, water and other essentials in desperately short supply. 
 
 “The government is doing all it can for rescue and relief on a war footing,” Koirala said in an interview with Reuters. “It is a challenge and a very difficult hour for Nepal.” 
 
 The death toll in Nepal alone rose to 5,057 on Tuesday, according to the country’s Emergency Operation Centre, which said more than 10,000 people have been injured. There are warnings the full extent of the tragedy will not be known until rescue teams have reached “flattened” villages in remote regions. 
 
 Nepalese police and volunteers clear the rubble while looking for survivors at the compound of a collapsed temple in Kathmandu. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters 
 
 “The death toll could go up to 10,000 because information from remote villages hit by the earthquake is yet to come in,” Koirala said. 
 
 In neighbouring India 61 people were killed and China’s official Xinhua News Agency said 25 people had died in Tibet. Eighteen others were killed in avalanches on Mount Everest. 
 
 Another avalanche hit a village in the district of Rasuwa, north of Kathmandu, on Tuesday, leaving up to 250 people missing. Ghodatabela, about a 12-hour walk from the nearest town, is along a popular trekking route, but it was not clear if the missing included trekkers. 
 
 Health workers said they feared a major health crisis was unfolding among survivors of the quake who are living in the open or in overcrowded tents with no access to sanitation or clean water. 
 
 
 
 On Tuesday helicopters crisscrossed the skies above Gorkha, close to the epicentre of Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, ferrying the injured to clinics and taking emergency supplies back to remote villages. Aid workers who had reached the region described entire villages reduced to rubble. 
 
 “In some villages, about 90% of the houses have collapsed. They’re just flattened,” said Rebecca McAteer, an American physician. Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for Gorkha, warned that people were not getting food and shelter. 
 
 Nepal earthquake: what the thousands of victims share is that they are poor Read more 
 
 That grim assessment was supported by World Vision aid worker Matt Darvas, who reached Gorkha on Monday. “It does not seem aid is reaching here very quickly,” he said. 
 
 “Further north from here the reports are very disturbing,” he said, adding that up to 75% of the buildings in Singla may have collapsed. There has been no contact with that village since Saturday night. 
 
 In the town of Dhulikhel, the main hospital, one of only two serving the Kabre district, with a population of 380,000, was due to run out of diesel fuel for its generator at midnight on Monday. 
 
 
 
 “We are trying to get more but it’s difficult. We’ve a little bit of solar but not enough to light the operating theatres and the wards,” said Dr Deepak Shrestha. 
 
 So far, police say they have 373 confirmed deaths in Gorkha. The death toll is expected to rise, though not “into the thousands”, said local officials. However vast numbers of homes have been destroyed, leaving tens of thousands at least exposed to chilly late spring Himalayan temperatures and frequent rain. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest People rest inside an Indian Air Force helicopter as they are evacuated from Trishuli Bazar to Kathmandu. Photograph: Jitendra Prakash/Reuters 
 
 Efforts to distribute aid are proceeding at an agonisingly slow pace, sparking anger among frustrated survivors. The delay stems in part from the extent of damage caused by the quake and interruptions from strong aftershocks. 
 
 “Rescue operations are underway, and in many places where buildings have collapsed there might be people trapped,” said Rameshwor Dangal, head of disaster management at Nepal’s home ministry. 
 
 “We are also in the process of getting information from villages, and these will add to the death toll.” 
 
 If the toll does reach 10,000 it would be even higher than the 8,500 killed in a massive quake in 1934 – Nepal’s worst disaster to date. 
 
 Residents whose homes were flattened or badly damaged by the quake criticised poor organisation by the Nepalese authorities, saying they had been left to fend for themselves for too long, even using their bare hands to search through the rubble for survivors. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Families in Kathmandu queue on Sunday to cremate their loved ones following the devastating earthquake 
 
 OP Singh, the head of India’s National Disaster Response Force, said finding survivors and the bodies of the dead would take time since the heavy equipment needed to clear rubble could not fit through many of Kathmandu’s narrow streets. 
 
 “You have to remove all this rubble, so that will take a lot of time ... I think it’s going to take weeks,” he told Indian TV. 
 
 Anil Giri, who was helping volunteers search for two of his friends thought to be trapped beneath collapsed buildings, said: “The government has not done anything for us. We are clearing the debris ourselves with our bare hands.” 
 
 Nepal earthquake destroys Kathmandu valley's architectural treasures Read more 
 
 Officials conceded they were struggling to cope with the sheer scale of the disaster. “The big challenge is relief,” said the Nepalese government’s chief secretary, Leela Mani Paudel. 
 
 Despite reports that 90% of Nepal’s 100,000 troops are now involved in the search and rescue effort, Paudel said international help could not arrive quickly enough. 
 
 “We urge foreign countries to give us special relief materials and medical teams. We are really desperate for more foreign expertise to pull through this crisis.” 
 
 In a rare piece of positive news, mountaineers reported that all 140 climbers who had been stranded at camps high up Mount Everest have been taken to safety. 
 
 
 
 “Everest, above base camp, is now empty,” Danish climber Carsten Lillelund Pedersen posted on his Facebook page. Eighteen people were killed in avalanches unleashed by the earthquake. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mount Everest’s south base camp. Photograph: 6summitschallenge.com/Reuters 
 
 The desperate poverty of the survivors is the thread that runs through the tragedy unfolding in Nepal. 
 
 Though many had predicted an earthquake in Kathmandu would bring the newly constructed cement apartment blocks tumbling down, it was the older, brick and wood homes that, almost exclusively, were reduced to rubble. Anyone who stayed in these could not afford better. 
 
 “Outside Kathmandu it’s the rural poor. But in the city it’s the people in the older precarious housing. It’s obvious: the wealthier you are, the stronger the house you have,” said Bhaskar Gautam, a local sociologist. 
 
 
 
 Extent of the destruction from Nepal's earthquake Read more 
 
 The aid situation is expected to improve as more planes packed with supplies arrive from India, China, the US, the UK, Australia, Pakistan and other countries, although that operation too is being held up by congestion at Kathmandu’s airport, and by a shortages of workers to unload cargo and vehicles to ferry supplies to where they are needed. 
 
 While the scale of the disaster is not yet fully known, aid workers said the humanitarian impact was likely to be overwhelming. 
 
 The United Nations estimates that as many as eight million of Nepal’s 28 million people have had their lives disrupted by the earthquake, adding that it was releasing US$15m from an emergency response fund to help the victims. 
 
 The UN said more than 1.4 million people need food assistance, including 750,000 who live near the quake’s epicentre in poor quality housing. Tens of thousands are thought to have been left homeless. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Temporary shelters in Kathmandu. Photograph: Cihan / Barcroft Media 
 
 As smoke from hundreds of funeral pyres filled the air in Kathmandu and the surrounding countryside, some survivors spoke of the near futility of attempting to reach anyone still alive in the rubble. 
 
 
 
 “We cannot look for missing people with a candle in our hands,” said Amarnath Prasad, 26, who was helping his best friend look for his mother. “She loved me like her son, and I think it is my duty to find her, dead or alive.” 
 
 Amid the destruction and chaos, parts of Kathmandu were coming back to life. Hawkers were selling limes and cabbage on pavements. One or two shops were open, even a bank. The city’s notorious traffic was still far from its usual level but was returning to congested normality. 
 
 Nepal earthquake: how to donate Read more 
 
 Yet thousands are still camping in open spaces, too frightened to return to their homes. Some say they will wait until 72 hours have passed, but continuing aftershocks rekindled their fear. 
 
 Many, too, were still seeking treatment for serious injuries, some waiting outside hospitals. The morgue at Bir hospital, the capital’s biggest, was overflowing, with bodies lined up outside. 
 
 There was also the fear of disease. “Now there could be communicable illnesses, diarrhoea, flu and so forth. The earthquake will have broken all the sewers and pipes so the water supply will be contaminated,” said Dr Sameer Thapa, as he looked out over a car park and garden covered in tents sheltering patients at the Tribhuvan University teaching hospital.
– Amid the sea of casualties in today's quake in Nepal are at least 10 that are garnering headlines of their own because of where tragedy befell them: on Everest. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the strongest to hit Nepal in more than eight decades, triggered a deadly avalanche in the Mount Everest region. NBC News reports the country's Tourism Ministry has thus far confirmed that 10 are dead, but the toll could very well rise. Indeed, USA Today reports an unknown number of people are missing, and the AP says some climbers may be cut off on routes leading to the summit. As for the scene at base camp, USA Today points to this from Danish climber Carsten Lillelund Pedersen: "Our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents." The AP spoke with Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association; he says at least 30 tents were flattened at base camp. Reuters quotes ministry officials as saying at least 1,000 people, about 40% of them foreigners, were on the mountain when the quake hit. The confirmed deaths establish today as at least the second deadliest day on the mountain. Exactly 51 weeks ago, 16 sherpas died on Everest, doubling the toll experienced in the previous worst day, the 1996 incident captured in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. The AP reports today's avalanche began on Mount Kumori, a 22,966-foot-high mountain just a few miles from Everest, and grew stronger as it barreled toward the base camp.