Dozens dead after another major earthquake centered in Nepal

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• At least 65 people have died in Nepal from Tuesday’s magnitude-7.3 earthquake there, the Nepali government said Wednesday. The number of people injured now stands at 1,926, said Nepali Home Ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal.

• At least 17 people in India have also died as a result of the tremor, Indian Home Ministry spokesman Kuldeep Dhatwalia told CNN. A woman in Tibet, a region of China, was killed by falling rocks, the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

• A U.S. military helicopter was declared missing Tuesday while in Nepal to support earthquake relief efforts there, officials said. The UH-1 Huey helicopter had six U.S. Marines and two Nepalis aboard at the time, the Pentagon said.

The death toll climbed Wednesday from Nepal’s second major earthquake in less than three weeks as officials tried to gauge the scale of the new wave of destruction.

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Just over two weeks after thousands died in a mammoth earthquake, Nepal got hit hard again Tuesday by another powerful tremor that has left dozens more dead, more than 1,000 injured and questions about what’s next for the already traumatized Asian nation.

Tuesday’s disaster piled fresh horror on Nepalis still picking up the pieces from last month’s quake and its legion of aftershocks. More buildings collapsed, more landslides rumbled and people once again scrambled for their lives.

“For the first seconds, it was complete silence. By the fifth second, everybody started to scream,” said Marc Sarrado, a 41-year-old documentarian from Spain who was in Nepal’s Nuwakot Valley, about two hours northwest of Kathmandu, when the quake hit.

“It was really, really intense. Even when the shaking stopped, people were still screaming. They were completely panicked, because they knew exactly what it was.”

Tuesday’s magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck about 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) deep, the U.S. Geological Survey said. In comparison, the magnitude-7.8 quake on April 25 – which killed more than 8,000 people – was centered to the northwest, rather than to the east, of Kathmandu and a little farther away (48 miles rather than 47 miles). Although at a similar depth, that earlier tremor was more than three times bigger and 5.6 times stronger, in terms of energy released, according to the USGS.

Tuesday’s quake was weaker but still deadly.

Nepali Home Ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal said Wednesday morning that at least 65 people in his country had been killed. The number of injured stood at 1,926, he said. Dozens of people were rescued alive from rubble, according to officials.

The carnage wasn’t confined to Nepal. China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported that a woman in Tibet died Tuesday afternoon after falling rocks hit the car she was in. At least 17 people were killed in northeastern India, according to Indian Home Ministry spokesman Kuldeep Dhatwalia. India’s military was also involved inside Nepal, caring for casualties and flying them by helicopter from the village of Mrigu to Kathmandu.

This latest quake only adds to the stress for residents of a region who had been trying to return to normalcy, until Mother Nature reasserted her destructive power.

It was “like the whole Earth was alive,” said Asim Rai, after huddling with his family in Kathmandu.

Throngs rush out into the streets of Kathmandu

Once again, residents of Nepal’s capital and most populated city found themselves in the middle of a nightmare, in the middle of the day.

Open space is often a precious commodity in Kathmandu, but especially on Tuesday. The city’s roads quickly clogged with people, many of them crying, according to Sajan Sharma.

CNN iReporter Prashup Rajbhandar initially huddled with loved ones as his four-story house swung back and forth, before rushing outside. Now, fearing a crack in his house, he’s not sure whether he’ll ever go back home – instead making do by cooking on his lawn and sleeping in cars.

“People are very scared,” Rajbhandari said. “And they don’t know what is going on.”

Another resident of the capital, Mingma Sherpa, said he and his friends jumped out of his car when they felt the earth begin to tremble. They ran with crowds of other people desperately seeking open space in a congested area of Kathmandu where there are few.

The quake also caused a spasm of chaos at Kathmandu’s airport, where Channel NewsAsia reporter Jack Board filmed hundreds of people running from the building as the ground rumbled.

Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, saw “hundreds of people pouring out of … buildings (amid) a lot of confusion, a lot of anxiety” as he drove around Kathmandu. Colleagues reported many collapsed buildings and others on the verge.

“You never get used to seeing telephone poles swaying and surfing past you,” he told CNN. “Or buildings just wobbling … as the earth moves beneath your feet.”

A return of landslides, destruction and fear

While more people may have been affected in Kathmandu than anywhere else in the region, simply by virtue of its size, that doesn’t mean it was hit the hardest.

Sabin Shrestha, a social activist, saw people run toward the hills in a village on the capital’s outskirts as fresh cracks appeared in dozens of houses.

As happened late last month, the tremor set off landslides. Landslides also occurred around Sindupalchowk, the district that suffered so much late last month. Anil Thapa, a journalist there, reported multiple houses down.

People in Lukla, a town that serves as a gateway to the Mount Everest region, rushed to the airport so they could be in an open area as the earth shook again. Most of Lukla’s buildings are perched precariously on hilly ground.

Many houses are damaged, he said, and the hospital in Lukla was tending to the injured, including four high school students from the village of Chaurikharka