REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Indonesian government is ready to provide assistance for Nepal which is devastated by a huge earthquake that killed a big number of people on Saturday.
"I have just told the ministers. Indonesia is ready to provide assistance," President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) said before boarding on the presidential plane which will take him to Kuala Lumpur to attend the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia, on Sunday.
However, Jokowi has not yet specified the form assistance Indonesia will give to the government and people of Nepal.
"We are preparing the assistance. There is no need to be in a hurry," President Jokowi said.
An earthquake measuring 7.9 on Richter scale rocked Nepal during the busy hours on Saturday.
According to Reuters, the powerful earthquake struck Nepal and sent tremors through northern India on Saturday, killing over a thousand people, toppling a 19th-century tower in the capital Kathmandu and touching off a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.
There were reports of devastation in outlying, isolated mountainous areas after the midday quake of magnitude 7.9, Nepal's worst in 81 years, centred 50 miles (80 km) east of the second city, Pokhara.
A collapse in communications hampered relief efforts, raising fears of a humanitarian disaster across the impoverished Himalayan nation of 28 million people.
A police official said the death toll in Nepal alone had reached 1.130, more than half of them in the Kathmandu Valley. A further 34 fatalities were reported in northern India and one in Bangladesh.
A tourism official said at least 10 people were killed when an avalanche unleashed by the earthquake swept through the Everest base camp, where more than 1,000 climbers had gathered at the start of the annual climbing season.
Choti Sherpa, who works at the Everest Summiteers Association, was unable to call her family and colleagues on the mountain. "Everyone is trying to contact each other, but we can't," she said. "We are all very worried."
A second tourism official, Mohan Krishna Sapkota, said it was "hard to even assess what the death toll and the extent of damage" around Everest could be.
"The trekkers are scattered all around the base camp and some had even trekked further up. It is almost impossible to get in touch with anyone."
Around 300,000 foreign tourists were estimated to be in various parts of Nepal for the spring trekking and climbing season in the Himalayas, and officials were overwhelmed by calls from concerned friends and relatives.
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