Two boys were playing at the weekend playing ball at the fourth story house in Swayambhu, west of capital. Suddenly, out of four stories building three were drawn They are yet to know where their parents gone with disappearance of their restaurant at first and second floor.

“They were laughing, having fun, just as usual. I saw them as I stepped out of our house and set off for the shops,” said their uncle Rabindra Shrestha. Shrestha remembered seeing his brothers on Saturday.

Mother and father disappeared in the huge pile of rubble and dust. Their seven year and nine year old son had been playing on the roof of the building. There was no sign of the their parents.

A series of strong aftershocks continued to shake the capital on Tuesday, hampering rescue efforts and forcing residents in the city of 4.5 million people out on to the streets, away from the buildings that had crumbled into dust the previous day.

The death toll in Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake is close to 4,500, with victims in Bangladesh, India and Tibet, as well as on Mount Everest, where it triggered avalanches that hit base camp, killing at least 17 people.

More than 8000 people across the region are believed to have been injured, though the full extent of the destruction, and the deaths, is still yet to be discovered.

The first to come to support Nepal at the time of crisis was India. With the initiative of prime minister Narendra Modi, seven aircraft landed at the midnight. China sent aircraft with huge rescue team and relief materials.

According to officials, more houses were destroyed and cracked in the region.

A US military aircraft with 70 personnel arrived in Kathmandu on Monday. Along with Nepal's two neighbors India and China and United States, Japan, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zeland were sending specialist urban search-and-rescue teams to Kathmandu. Britain was also delivering supplies and medics.

Officials said on Tuesday morning that the total number of dead and wounded in various other districts was still unclear but, having had contact with most of their outlying administrators, it is expected that the devastation will be much higher.

An avalanche triggered by the quake killed 18 people at Mount Everest’s base camp, while 85 people were killed in India and China.

More than 1,800 of the fatalities were from the heavily populated Kathmandu valley, while another 1023 were from the district of Sindulpalchuk, east of the Nepalese capital.

Despite international aid efforts, the authorities are yet to cope with the devastation. Nepal is still rocking numbers of after shocks. As after shocks continue to come, people are yet to return home.

Large numbers of people are taking safe refugees at the street and open space of Kathmandu. As most of the open space have occupied by buildings, there are only a few open space remains in the valley.

With the support from International experts including India,China, Japan and United States of America, Nepal Army, Nepal Armed Police and Nepal Police are in the search and rescue operation.

According to spokesperson of Ministry of Home, hundreds of death bodies are still to be buried in various parts of the country. As the rescue and search operation focuses on Kathmandu valley, Indian Army helicopters are used to make search and rescue operation in hills and mountains.

The government says it is overwhelmed with requests for help across the country, as everything from paramedics to electricity remain in short supply.

According to Guardian, a huge international aid operation is being mobilized to help the victims of the earthquake in Nepal, which has left tens of thousands of people homeless and raised fears of food and medicine shortages and an increased risk of waterborne and infectious diseases.

As the death toll from Saturday’s quake passed 4500 till Tuesday morning, the Nepalese government said it was struggling to cope with the aftermath of the disaster and reach those cut off in remote areas.

“We are overwhelmed with rescue and assistance requests from all across the country,” said spokesperson of Ministry of Home.

Lila Mani Poudyal, the government’s chief secretary and the rescue coordinator, appealed for more help from the international community, saying Nepal was short of everything from paramedics to electricity.

“We are appealing for tents, dry goods, blankets, mattresses, and 80 different medicines ... that we desperately need now,” he told reporters. “We don’t have the helicopters that we need or the expertise to rescue the people trapped.”

Hospital beds in Kathmandu are already full, forcing other sick and injured people to seek makeshift treatment in the street alongside thousands of displaced survivors whose homes were destroyed or are in imminent danger of collapse after being weakened by the 7.8-magnitude quake.

The UN World Food Program said on Monday that it was anticipating “a massive operation” and had mobilized all its food stocks on the region, while the World Health Organization said it had already distributed medical supplies to cover the health needs of more than 40,000 people for three months in the country.

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, said at least 940,000 Nepalese children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, adding that those left homeless by the earthquake were particularly vulnerable.

“There have been reports of dwindling supplies of water and food, power outages, and downed communication networks,” it said in a statement.

“Hundreds of thousands of people spent the night sleeping in open areas, out of fear of more tremors. Heavy rain is now also reported which can further worsen the conditions. This crisis leaves children particularly vulnerable – limited access to safe water and sanitation will put children at great risk from waterborne diseases, while some children may have become separated from their families.”

On Monday, the Disaster Emergency Committee – a coalition of UK aid charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the British Red Cross – launched an appeal in response to the crisis.

Untied States has already pledged 2o million dollar additional support.

The British government, which has pledged £5m towards the disaster relief effort, said it would dispatch an RAF transport plane to Nepal carrying a team of Gurkha engineers, more than 1,100 shelter kits and over 1,700 solar lanterns.

India flew in medical supplies and members of its disaster response force, while China sent a 60-strong emergency team. Pakistan’s army said it was sending four C-130 aircraft with a 30-bed hospital, search-and-rescue teams and relief supplies.

“The rescue workers are in a really bad shape. We are all about to collapse. We have worked two straight nights,” said home ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dhakal.

Rescuers used their bare hands, with no protective gear or heat detectors, in their search for survivors in what remains of the Dharahara tower. The narrow alleys would stop cranes, earth-movers or diggers reaching most of the houses that have collapsed, even if the aftershocks had not scared workers out of even trying, said Shyam Adhikari, the local police chief.

“Anyway, there’s not much point. There are some entire families buried. We know because no one reported them missing. No one is alive under the rubble,” he said.

"With so many people sleeping in the open with no power or water and downpours forecast, there were mounting fears of major food and water shortages," reports The Guardian.

“There is no electricity, no water. Our main challenge and priority is to restore electricity and water,” Dhakal said. “The next big challenge is the supply of food. Shopkeepers are unable to go in and open their shops. So people are facing difficulty buying food.”

The immediate aftermath has underlined Nepal’s inability to cope with a disaster of this scale. The country has a population of 28 million, with only 2.1 doctors and 50 hospital beds for every 10,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

“The earthquake has exposed that Nepal’s best public hospital infrastructure has crumbled at a time when it should serve more people in a hurry,” said Sarvendra Moongla, a senior surgeon at Bir Hospital’s trauma center in Kathmandu.

The truth, however, may be that Nepali officials have simply been overwhelmed. The country is one of the poorest in Asia and has extremely limited ability to cope with any emergency, let alone a humanitarian disaster on this scale.

”We are lacking proper resources and equipments to deal with the rescue, we are trying our best, though,”Nepal Police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam said. “We don’t have enough cranes to dig out rapidly in all places – so it’s taking time to recover the buried.”

Aid is now arriving. An Indian team is already in Bhaktapur and countries across the world, including the UK, are sending relief. With Kathmandu airport reopened, the first aid flights have begun delivering aid supplies. The first countries to respond were Nepal’s neighbors, India, China and Pakistan, all of which have been jockeying for influence over the landlocked nation. 

Her three nieces and their mother were not so fortunate. Their father has since disappeared, last seen, deranged by grief, shouting that his wife and daughters were calling to him and that he had to join them. No one knows where he is.

Google has launched its Person Finder, a crowdsourced database that allows anyone to report the names of people who may be missing using either a computer or mobile phone. The platform was tracking about 4,800 names as of Sunday night US eastern time.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has deployed its tracing service, which allows anyone to search for missing relatives or to report that they are alive.

Facebook on Saturday activated Safety Check, a service that notifies you if any of your friends are in one of the areas affected by the earthquake, and asks whether you want to check on them.

Know of other online platforms that are assisting exchanges of information about the earthquake? Tweet them to @bbrowdie.

Quartz also is continuing to assemble a list of organizations that are collecting funds to aid victims that you can support.