Mass cremations held in Nepal for quake victims

Mass cremations were held here on Monday for the victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal, even as rescuers continued to pull out bodies buried under the rubble of flattened homes and buildings.

Hundreds were cremated in open grounds as funeral pyres burned with families of victims wailing in grief after losing their loved ones.

Almost every available space along the Bagmati river’s banks and on its sandbank islands had been taken by the pyres. Around these funerals, the families, hastily assembling their piles of wood, 

gathered. The smoke rose and floated over the city ravaged by ugly devastation of the 7.9-magnitude quake. The quake that flattened homes and buildings and the subsequent powerful aftershocks forced people out to live in open under plastic tents barely shielding them from cold and rains that pounded the city last night.