Mount Everest evacuation
A rescue helicopter comes in for a landing to pick up the injured from Everest Base Camp Getty

Israeli tourists trapped in a remote Himalayan valley fought with locals for places on evacuation helicopters amid life-threatening avalanches four days after Nepal's devastating earthquake.

A report in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot said: "The villagers [in the Langtang Valley] demanded that they be evacuated first, threatened the Israelis and rushed the helicopter. One of the Nepalese was killed when his head was hit by the rotor and in another case several villagers grabbed the helicopter co-pilot and took him hostage to ensure they would be evacuated."

The valley is popular with foreign trekkers, and many Israelis, and many villages in the area have been wiped out by avalanches, rock falls and aftershocks.

Yediot reported that rescuers sent by Israeli insurance companies eventually moved the 150 tourists on foot to an alternative landing spot. Israel has the largest medical rescue team in Nepal, with more than 250 doctors, medics and other specialists.

"Villagers think the tourists are taking too much of the food," said Amit Rubin, of Magnus International Search & Rescue. "It is very cold up there, people don't have food and they are getting really desperate," said Yehonathan Lebel, of the Israeli embassy in Kathmandu.

The Nepali Times quoted survivors at a Kathmandu hospital who said that most of the 200 inhabitants of their village in Langtang had been killed. "The entire village is gone, our house is gone. Where can I go once this is over?" said Dawa Tamang, whose two-year-old son has broken legs. Chunchok Tamang, 29, lay in the next bed with her daughter, aged one, having lost her husband and mother-in-law.

"I survived because I wasn't inside the house, but my entire family is gone. Where will I go with this little one?"

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