Earthquake in Nepal

Thousands of people began fleeing the capital Kathmandu, terror-stricken by two days of powerful aftershocks and fearing shortages of food and water.

Roads leading out of the mountain valley city of one million were jammed with people, many with babies in their arms, trying to climb onto buses or hitch a ride aboard cars and trucks.

Huge queues had formed at Kathmandu airport with people desperate to get a flight out.

"I'm willing even to sell the gold I'm wearing to buy a ticket, but there is nothing available," said Rama Bahadur, an Indian woman who works in Nepal's capital.

More than 3,700 people were killed and at least 6,500 injured in the quake. The toll is likely to rise as rescuers struggle to reach remote regions in the impoverished, mountainous country of 28 million people and as bodies buried under rubble are recovered.

The Nepali government has appealed for foreign assistance with the aftermath of the worst earthquake to hit the South Asian country since 1934 when 8,500 died.

Across Kathmandu and beyond, exhausted families laid mattresses out on streets and erected tents to shelter from rain. People queued for water dispensed from the back of trucks, while the few stores still open had next to nothing on their shelves. Crowds jostled for medicine at one pharmacy.

The United Nations Childreds Fund said nearly one million children in Nepal were severely affected by the quake, and warned of waterborne and infectious diseases.

The disaster has underlined the woeful state of Nepal's medical facilities.

Nepal has only 2.1 physicians and 50 hospital beds for every 10,000 people, according to a 2011 World Health Organization report.

The sick and wounded were lying out in the open in Kathmandu, unable to find beds in the devastated city's hospitals. Surgeons set up an operating theatre inside a tent in the grounds of Kathmandu Medical College.

"We are overwhelmed with rescue and assistance requests from all across the country," said Deepak Panda, a member of the country's disaster management.