Nepal quake: 1,000 EU citizens still unaccounted for, says envoy

Officials are struggling to find 1,000 EU citizens who are unaccounted for in Nepal, six days after an earthquake that killed more than 6,000 people.

An EU official said most are thought to have been trekking in the Everest or remote Langtang regions. Many are hoped to be alive but isolated by the quake.

The fate of thousands of Nepalese in remote communities is also unknown.

Nepal has called for more foreign help and humanitarian aid, admitting it was ill-prepared for the disaster.

Information Minister Minendra Rijal told the BBC that "seminars and workshops probably are not that useful" in dealing with the crisis.

"And any projection has not taken into account... that so many people and so many districts would be affected," he said. "This is a calamity of enormous proportions."

At Kathmandu's historic Durbar Square, soldiers and volunteers form human chains to remove the debris, brick by brick. The bricks come from historic buildings levelled by the earthquake. Many are very old and are being stored so that they can be used to rebuild these ancient sites.

The soldiers are joined by aid workers - but also tourists. One French visitor said she "just wanted to help". But it's an ad-hoc approach which characterises the entire relief operation.

I met rescue and medical teams from France and China. After wandering around they left. "We don't know what we are supposed to be doing," one French rescue worker told me.