7 American citizens rescued in Nepal

The U.S. Embassy in Nepal said Friday that nine people were rescued, seven of them American citizens, in Gorkha — about four hours from Kathmandu, which was devastated by last weekend's earthquake that killed over 6,200 people.

Details on the survivors or under what conditions they were rescued have not yet been released.

The development comes as the European Union earlier Friday said that 1,000 of its citizens, mostly tourists, remain unaccounted for following the magnitude-7.8 quake that struck on Saturday in Nepal, a poor Himalayan nation of 28 million.

"We don't know where they are, or where they could be," EU ambassador to Nepal Rensje Teerink told reporters there on Friday. "Of course that doesn't mean they are dead. It just means they haven't reported back." Teerink said 12 EU citizens have been confirmed dead.

Many Americans are thought to still be unaccounted for following the quake, but the U.S. Embassy has not provided an exact number or estimates for those missing. Four have so far been confirmed killed.

More than 130,000 houses were destroyed in the capital Kathmandu, according to the United Nations. On Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was rescued from ruble after being buried for five days. He survived by eating packages of butter, reports said.

Although poorer sections of the capital remained strewn with collapsed buildings on Friday, the Associated Press reported that there were visibly fewer tents standing in a central part of the city that had been packed with people in the first few days after quake hit amid repeated aftershocks.

"We are trying to get as much fresh food to the people as possible," Krishna Maharjan, a farmer on the outskirts of Kathmandu who brought green onions and cauliflower on his bicycle into the city, told the AP.

"I feel it is our small contribution. But that's what we can do and every little bit helps," he said.

Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer with Miyamoto International, told the AP that he was surprised not more people were killed given the poor condition of Kathmandu's old buildings. "It could have been so much worse," he said.