While many villages across Nepal are still waiting for rescue and relief teams, life in the capital, Kathmandu, was slowly returning to normal Wednesday as the official death toll topped 7,300.Municipal workers on Wednesday began cleaning the streets, and the “kalimati bazaar” — the vegetable market — has reopened.
Before first light, truckloads of fresh produce were unloaded and customers began to arrive.Although poorer sections of the city remained strewn with collapsed buildings, there were visibly fewer tents standing in a central part of Kathmandu that had been packed with people in the first few days after the magnitude 7.8 quake hit amid repeated aftershocks. Soldiers searched through the wreckage of a collapsed house until midnight on Sunday but were unable to free the child, according to the newspaper. He was only found when they returned and heard a faint cry from beneath the ruins of the building, leading them to search the entire area again. A home ministry official said the 7,300 fatalities had been confirmed, with 13,906 injured. The head of the European Union delegation in Nepal said 1,000 people from the EU are missing and 12 are confirmed dead.
