The airmobile hospital of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has begun operations in Chile. On Sunday the surgeons from Emercom and the Disaster Medicine Center operated on four people, while psychologists helped 13 earthquake victims. Russian medics are speaking with local patients and doctors through interpreters. The local authorities have also found Russian-speaking nurses for the Russian hospital in Puente Alto.
Three strong aftershocks from last month’s quake, one of them with a 7.2 magnitude, rocked Chile on Thursday at 11.39 a.m. local time (5.39 p.m. Moscow time). Chile's newly inaugurated president, Sebastian Pinera announced “a state of emergency” in the region which has a population of 780,000 people. The initial devastating quake with a magnitude of 8.8 hit the country two weeks earlier, in the early hours of February 27. According to the Chilean Interior Ministry, it claimed 497 lives and left some 500 people wounded and hundreds missing.