IDF Rescue Team Departs for Nepal; 1, 900 Dead

Today (Sunday) Israel sent the first large Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rescue team with emergency aid to assist Nepal, where more than 1, 900 were killed in an earthquake. The team from the IDF Home Front Command set out to Kathmandu in two planes and includes 240 medical and logistics officers, a field hospital crew,  advanced communication equipment which relies on satellites instead of local phone lines, and a representative of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The delegation will be in Nepal for at least two weeks.

The team will determine the extant of the damages and estimate the level of aid required. The IDF will send additional emergency aid if necessary. Israeli humanitarian aid group IsraAID also launched an online appeal to raise emergency relief funds for Nepal in the wake of the quake and said it had a disaster team ready to deploy there.

Officials said 10 people were killed when an avalanche buried parts of Mount Everest’s base camp in Nepal, where hundreds of mountaineers had gathered at the start of the annual climbing season. “We don’t have the details yet, but 10 have been reported dead so far, including foreign climbers, ” Gyanendra Kumar Shrestha, an official in Nepal’s tourism department, told AFP. “We are trying to assess how many are injured. There might be over 1, 000 people there right now, including foreign climbers and Nepalese supporting staff.”