The Ministry of Defence on Monday, announced that an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane carrying 291 passengers rescued from earthquake-struck Nepal landed at the Palam airport on Monday morning.
“The Indian Air Force plane landed at Palam from Kathmandu with 291 passengers on board at 6.30 this morning. While feeble tremors continue to rock Nepal on the third day, one Rapid Action Medical Team (RATM) of IAF is ready with their medicines and equipment to set up first aid centre in Lagankhel, eight kilometres from the airport in Kathmandu”, said an IAF official.
The IAF till Monday evening had airlifted 2,246 people despite bad weather and an aftershock that briefly shut the Kathmandu airport on Sunday. However, many more Indian tourists and pilgrims were stranded in the Nepalese capital and other places.
Plans have been drawn up to evacuate people in a fleet of buses once roads linking Nepal to the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are repaired and opened.
The relief teams will have their work cut out for them as several roads and highways are blocked by landslides triggered by the massive quake and dozens of aftershocks, officials said.
With hundreds of Indians stranded in Nepal in the wake of Saturday’s 7.9-magnitude quake that killed more than 3,700 people in the Himalayan nation, officials are focusing on opening up damaged roads so that people can be evacuated in buses because the number of flights from Kathmandu airport is limited.