Nepal schools formally open after deadly quake

Schools have formally reopened in Nepal, following a devastating earthquake that killed thousands of people.

Tens of thousands of children returned to their classrooms on Sunday, marking the end of a school closure enforced by the government last month.

On April 25, the Asian country was rocked by an 8.1-magnitude earthquake. Nearly 9,000 people were killed and many others were injured or displaced.

Some schools were so badly damaged that the government had to build temporary classrooms with bamboo or tents. Some of these temporary schools were set up in soccer pitches of schools technically deemed “safe.”

Parents reported that their children were still spooked to leave their side, let alone attend classes, according to AFP.

“Aftershocks are still continuing. It is difficult not to be nervous about sending the children to school again,” Mina Shrestha, the mother of one of school kids, was quoted as saying.

The devastating quake was followed by aftershocks in the following days, but one specifically measuring 7.3 magnitude of the Richter scale hit the country on May 12.

However, some of the kids were excited to go back to school. “We’ve been staying home for so long, it is nice to play here and meet my friends again,” said nine-year-old Muskan Bajracharya.

Nepal is prone to earthquakes as it sits where collisions between tectonic plates are common.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that “along the southern border of Nepal is the so-called Indus-Yarlung suture zone, where what is now the Indian subcontinent collided 40 million to 50 million years ago with the Eurasian plate, a region that includes most of Europe and Asia.”

April’s devastating quake in Nepal also killed more than 100 people in neighboring India and China.

The UN says the quake has affected more than a quarter of Nepal’s 28 million people.