Israel to send search and rescue team to Nepal after quake

 

A Magen David Adom team would leave to Nepal to provide aid to Israelis and to other disaster victims early morning Sunday. Two El-Al airliners would leave for Nepal Sunday afternoon, carrying a humanitarian assistance team from the Israeli army and the Defense Ministry. On the flight back, the airliners would carry Israeli survivors as well as 24 babies born to surrogate mothers, together with their Israeli parents.  

 

The 7.9-magnitude quake reportedly killed over 1,341 people in four countries and even triggered an avalanche on Mt. Everest. So far it is unknown if any Israelis were wounded. About 250 Israelis currently in Nepal have yet to make contact, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

 

The Israeli army will send a team of five on Saturday to examine the extent of assistance needed in Nepal, ahead of sending the search and rescue team, Defense Minister Moshe Ya\’alon said.

 

Sources in the Prime Minister\’s Office said that the search and rescue team will leave Israel as soon as possible and will land near the disaster area, where it will wait until the Kathmandu airport is reopened. It will then open a field hospital in Kathmandu. 

 

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman spoke with Israel\’s ambassador in Nepal, Yaron Meir, who provided Lieberman with a report about the situation in the country. Meir informed Lieberman that the staff of the embassy is uninjured but that the embassy building in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, was damaged and the staff there is working from a courtyard of the building.

 

The Israeli ambassador noted that since roads in the capital are impassable by car, Israeli embassy staff are making their way on foot in an effort to determine if any Israelis have been injured and how assistance can be provided.

 

Due to the disaster, the Israeli embassy staff in Kathmandu will be reinforced by diplomats from the Israeli embassies in New Delhi, India and Bangkok, Thailand, as well as staff to be sent from the Foreign Ministry\’s offices in Jerusalem. This will only happen, however, when the Kathmandu airport, which was also damaged in the quake, is reopened.

 

As a result of the quake, the Foreign Ministry said it would expedite the process of bringing to Israel 24 babies with Israeli parents born to surrogate mothers in Nepal. The Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry are currently working to issue the necessary documents for the infants so they can be flown to Israel with their parents once the Kathmandu airport is reopened.

 

"We know that there are many Israelis in Kathmandu, in the Chabad House or in the Israeli embassy, where they are taken care of," Nadav Khalifa, who operates a situation room for an Israeli insurance agency, said.

 

He added that the agency has not heard yet from a group of Israelis currently on a trek, but that they do not know if contact was lost due to damage to communication networks or because something happened.

 

Idan Mund, a 23-year-old hiker in Nepal from the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon who was on the outskirts of Kathmandu at the time of the quake, said he saw hundreds of local residents on the streets following the earthquake in an area where buildings had collapsed and other structures were in danger of falling in on themselves. He then set out for the center of the capital and witnessed what he said were huge throngs of people on the roads "sitting on rugs in the middle of the street, heavy traffic from emergency vehicles as well as a lot of passenger cars and public vehicles taking the injured to the hospital."

 

At Chabad House, Mund said, he saw a man who had been running and was cut by glass. From there, the Ramat Hasharon resident went to the Israeli embassy, where he said a number of tents had been set up, mostly for Israeli parents and their infants who had been born to surrogate mothers. Mund had planned to spend another month traveling but following the quake, he said he had decided that he had had enough and would return home to Israel.