Missing US helicopter is found

The wreckage of a US military helicopter that went missing with eight people on board while delivering aid in quake-hit Nepal has been located near the Chinese border, the Nepalese army said on Friday.

Major General Binoj Basnet said the helicopter, which disappeared on Tuesday, was spotted from the air in a remote forest around 70 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu.

"We don't know if there are any survivors; we have yet to confirm that," Basnet said.

"We have sighted the wreckage from the air. We are now trying to land in the area and get more information."

Basnet said strong winds were making it difficult to land in the mountainous region where the wreckage had been sighted.

"It's a difficult area to land in. We have sent ground troops to the site as well," he added.

Army helicopters and hundreds of ground troops had been deployed to scour the mountainous terrain where the US chopper disappeared on the same day a second major earthquake hit the country.

The US military said earlier that the UH-1Y Huey was carrying six US Marines and two soldiers from the Nepalese army when it went missing during a relief flight.

Relief teams from around the world have been working for weeks to provide water, food, shelter and medical assistance to Nepal after a 7.9-magnitude quake hit on April 25.

Nearly 8,500 people have now been confirmed dead in the disaster, which destroyed more than half a million homes and left huge numbers of people without shelter with just weeks to go until the monsoon rains.

The missing helicopter was among more than a dozen US military aircraft devoted to aid operations, including two other Hueys, and four tilt-rotor Ospreys and cargo planes.

Before it went missing, there was "some chatter about a fuel problem" on the radio from the helicopter crew, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said on Tuesday.

The United Nations has said it faces a "monumental challenge" to bring relief to victims, many of whom live in areas accessible only on foot or by helicopter.

The Nepalese government has said it was overwhelmed by the scale of the April 25 disaster, the deadliest earth-quake to hit the country in more than 80 years.

The challenge was compounded by Tuesday's quake, which was centered in the remote eastern district of Dolakha and triggered multiple landslides.

The death toll from that quake rose to 117 overnight. A Dolakha government official said on Friday that bodies were still being retrieved from under the debris.

"We have been struggling to reach certain places because of road blockages and disruptions to communications," Assistant Chief District Officer Aaulakh Bahadur Ale said.