TEMPO.CO, Kathmandu - Nepalese tourist guide Naba Raj Amgai had just returned home from a mountain-biking trip when his home in the capital Kathmandu began to shake, sending a fridge and television smashing to the ground.
He and his wife bolted for the stairs. Outside, his neighbours were pouring onto the street, shouting and crying.
"It was horrible," said Amgai, who was standing out on the street several hours later. "I still haven't gone back inside."
The magnitude 7.9 earthquake, Nepal's biggest for 81 years, struck west of Kathmandu just before noon on Saturday. Officials said it had killed at least 1,130 people in the Himalayan nation and dozens in neighbouring countries.
The quake was also felt across Bangladesh, northern India and Chinese Tibet, collapsing ancient buildings, modern complexes and modest village homes.
Eyewitnesses described scenes of panic and confusion in the Nepali capital when the ground started shaking beneath their feet, sending people running out of their homes and onto streets choked with thick dust.
"The ground underneath me was shaking. I thought I was going to sink into it," said Hari Adhikari, a 60-year-old vegetable seller.
In Patan, a densely packed neighbourhood, a Reuters reporter heard neighbours screaming as the first tremor hit.
"I was eating near the city centre in Kathmandu when suddenly the tables started trembling and paintings on the wall fell on the ground," Devyani Pant, an Indian tourist in Kathmandu, told Reuters. "I screamed and rushed outside."
Across the region, people were injured in the scramble to get out of shaking buildings and onto safer ground.
In the Indian state of West Bengal, dozens of children were caught up in stampedes to leave two different school buildings, according to an official in Malda district, with several sustaining minor injuries.
In Bangladesh, buildings across the old part of the capital Dhaka cracked from the impact, and several workers in a garment factory were hurt as they rushed to escape.
REUTERS
