BBC Online :
A 15-year-old boy has been rescued from the rubble of a building in Kathmandu, five days after an earthquake that killed at least 5,500 people in Nepal.
Pemba Lama told the BBC he survived by drinking water from wet clothes and eating pots of clarified butter. He was taken to a field hospital.
Meanwhile, bad weather is hampering the delivery of relief to remote villages, a Nepali government spokesman said.
The government has been criticised for its response to the disaster.Outside the capital Kathmandu, the relief effort has relied heavily on helicopters, with mountain roads blocked by landslides triggered by the earthquake.
Laxmi Dhakal, a spokesperson for Nepal’s home ministry, told the BBC that helicopters loaded with rescue workers and relief materials were ready to fly but had been held back by “rainfall and cloudy conditions”.
In Kathmandu, rescue workers from Nepal and the US worked for hours to free the boy from the rubble of the building. A huge crowd cheered as Pemba Lama emerged, blinking into the sunlight.
Media caption Pemba Lama: “I saw two containers of butter and ate it to survive”
He was carried away on a stretcher with a brace strapped around his neck, and was taken to an Israeli-run field hospital. He later told the BBC: “There were so many people around me in the rubble. They were screaming.”
Andrew Olvera, of the US Agency for International Development, earlier told the Associated Press news agency that the boy had been trapped between the collapsed floors of the building but was not “too far down”.
On Wednesday night, Nepalese soldiers in the town of Bhaktapur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, reportedly rescued an 11-year-old girl from earthquake rubble.
The girl was freed from a damaged building in the town’s Dattatreya Square, according to a tweet from Kunda Dixit, the editor of the Nepali Times newspaper.
Meanwhile, climbing is expected to resume next week on Mount Everest, where avalanches triggered by the earthquake killed 18 people.
Damaged ladders in an area of the mountain known as the Khumbu icefall would be repaired within the next few days, according to the chief of Nepal’s tourism department, Tulsi Gautam. “There is no reason for anyone to quit their expedition,” he said.
Frustration has been growing in parts of rural Nepal over the pace of relief efforts, with some badly-affected villages yet to receive any assistance.
Riot police faced an angry crowd in the capital, Kathmandu Officials say Saturday’s quake injured at least 11,000 people. The UN says more than eight million people have been affected by Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and some 70,000 houses have been destroyed.
Dozens of countries are supporting the aid operation, contributing search-and-rescue teams, aircraft, medical supplies and communications equipment.
Some helicopter crews who have managed to land in isolated communities have been faced with desperate villagers pleading to be airlifted to safety.
Despite extensive damage, experts say the number of casualties in many villages was lower than feared because people were working outdoors when the quake struck.
In Kathmandu, riot police clashed on Wednesday with protesters angry at a lack of transport out of the city and delays in distributing aid.
However, there have been some signs that parts of the capital are returning to normal.
Some people have decided to return to their homes, having spent several nights out in the open. Cash machines have been refilled and some shops and street vendors have once again started trading.
