Rain hampers global efforts

Rescuers raced against time to search for survivors feared trapped under mountains of debris in quake-hit Nepal where over 5,000 people have been killed, even as heavy rain hampered global humanitarian efforts in remote areas of the battered country.

Quake relief efforts continued, but officials warned that they were hampered by problems of getting aid into the country and then delivering it to some of the remote communities in desperate need in the Himalayan nation.

Landslides in remote mountainous areas around the epicentre of the quake hampered rescue and relief teams. A government spokesman said that helicopters had been dropping tents,  food and medicine to  villages but they were yet to reach many isolated communities.