Strong quake hits India, Nepal; 23 dead

Nepalese rescue workers and people look on after after the British Embassy's compound wall collapsed reportedly killing three pedestrians following an earthquake in Katmandu, Nepal, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011. A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit northeastern India on Sunday near the border with Nepal. Reports said several people were injured and some buildings fell in the capital of India's Sikkim state. In neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the quake sent residents rushing out their homes, offices and shopping centers. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)

Nepalese rescue workers and people look on after after the British Embassy's compound wall collapsed reportedly killing three pedestrians following an earthquake in Katmandu, Nepal, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011. A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit northeastern India on Sunday near the border with Nepal. Reports said several people were injured and some buildings fell in the capital of India's Sikkim state. In neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the quake sent residents rushing out their homes, offices and shopping centers. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)

People who rushed out of buildings following tremors stand on the street in Patna, India, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011. A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit northeastern India on Sunday near the border with Nepal. Reports said several people were injured and some buildings fell in the capital of India's Sikkim state. In neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the quake sent residents rushing out their homes, offices and shopping centers. (AP Photo) INDIA OUT

People who rushed out of office buildings following tremors talk on their phones Karwanbazar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011. A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit northeastern India on Sunday near the border with Nepal. Reports said several people were injured and some buildings fell in the capital of India's Sikkim state. In neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the quake sent residents rushing out their homes, offices and shopping centers. (AP Photo/Zia Islam)

Nepalese rescue workers and people stand near a damaged car after after the British Embassy's compound wall collapsed reportedly killing three pedestrians following an earthquake in Katmandu, Nepal, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011. A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit northeastern India on Sunday near the border with Nepal. Reports said several people were injured and some buildings fell in the capital of India's Sikkim state. In neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the quake sent residents rushing out their homes, offices and shopping centers. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)

Map locates Sikkim, India, where an earthquake has occurred.

GAUHATI, India (AP) ? The death toll from a strong earthquake in northeastern India and Nepal climbed to 23 on Monday, but police said the full extent of the damage in the remote region was not known.

The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9, struck at 6:10 p.m. Sunday local time, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and sending people rushing into the streets. The epicenter was in India's Sikkim state near the border with Nepal, but shaking was felt across northern and eastern India and as far away as Bangladesh and Tibet.

At least seven people in India's Sikkim state were killed and more than 50 injured, according to the state's top official, Chief Secretary Karma Gyatso. The north Indian state of West Bengal reported six deaths, and Bihar state reported three.

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, Katmandu. Nearly 70 people were injured, some of them seriously, and were in hospitals across the city.

The full extent of damage was not immediately known because the region is sparsely populated with many people living in remote areas now cut off by mudslides triggered by the quake, Sikkim state police Chief Jasbir Singh told The Associated Press.

TV stations reported buildings buckled, sidewalks cracked and two major roads collapsed in Sikkim's state capital of Gangtok, 42 miles (68 kilometers) southeast of the quake's epicenter near the border with Nepal. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police said two of its buildings had collapsed in Gangtok.

Small army columns fanned out across the city of some 50,000 overnight to search for anyone pinned under fallen debris.

"We have sounded a high alert. Police are on the streets in Gangtok and other major towns," Gyatso said.

Electricity and some phone service was interrupted in the area.

Gyatso said paramilitary soldiers worked through the night Sunday trying to clear the national highway blocked at two places due to landslides.

Power lines snapped in the West Bengal cities of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, which "are now in total darkness," state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, according to Press Trust of India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned the National Disaster Management Authority for an emergency meeting.

The region has been hit by major earthquakes in the past, including in 1950 and 1897.

In neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the quake Sunday night sent residents rushing out of their homes, offices and shopping centers.

In Katmandu, 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.

The quake was also felt as far as the Indian capital, with New Delhi residents also rushing out of shaking buildings, and in the Chinese-ruled Himalayan region of Tibet. According to China's official Xinhua News Agency, the quake caused three houses in Tibet to collapse, injured one person and disrupted a border county's telecommunications services.

There have been at least two aftershocks of magnitude 6.1 and 5.3, Indian seismology official R.S. Dattatreyan said. He warned more aftershocks were possible.

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Associated Press writers Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal; Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-09-19-AS-India-Earthquake/id-256c14bd07574e298e0c940fd0d46370

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