Heavily armed separatist rebels have ambushed a paramilitary convoy in India's remote northeast, killing eight soldiers and injuring six, officials said Monday.

The militants opened fire on the troops before exploding a small bomb during the attack on Sunday in underdeveloped Nagaland close to the border with Myanmar, the state's police chief said.

U.S. military helicopters began reconnaissance trips Monday to assess remote areas of Nepal devastated by an earthquake that killed more than 7,300 people, an official said.

Nine days after a 7.8-magnitude quake brought death and destruction to the Himalayan nation, the helicopters surveyed mountain villages.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ended a visit to Sri Lanka Sunday after pledging support for minority Tamils following decades of ethnic war, a local Tamil politician said.

Kerry met heads of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main political party from the ethnic minority, a day after holding talks with Sri Lanka's new President Maithripala Sirisena.

The death toll from an earthquake that ripped through Nepal will climb "much higher", the government warned Sunday, as relief teams raced to reach survivors of the disaster that has already claimed more than 7,000 lives.

Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said the toll will jump once teams reached far-flung villages feared flattened in the worst quake to hit the impoverished Himalayan nation in more than 80 years. 

At Pokhara airport in the Himalayas, Indian soldiers race back and forth loading rice, blankets, tarpaulins and other aid onto waiting helicopters for delivery to Nepal's quake-devastated villages.

In the ruined ancient town of Bhaktapur outside the capital Kathmandu, Chinese rescuers in blue uniforms search for survivors in the rubble of toppled temples and homes.

A 16-year-old Indian girl who was allegedly molested on a bus by the conductor and then pushed off while it was moving has died of her injuries, reports said Thursday.

Police said the girl was traveling with her mother on the bus in northern Punjab state on Wednesday when the conductor, a cleaner and a passenger harassed and groped them, Press Trust of India reported. 

Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday sought to reassure his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Kabul was committed to its close relationship with New Delhi despite warming ties with Pakistan.

Afghanistan's president arrived in India late Monday on a three-day trip designed to patch up relations with its neighbor, which have frayed since Ghani assumed office in September.

At least 10 construction workers from Pakistan and one from India were killed in the collapse of a convention center being built in Saudi Arabia, an Asian diplomatic source said Tuesday.

The building, at a university in Qassim northwest of the capital Riyadh, collapsed on Monday.

India on Sunday dispatched 13 military aircraft to Nepal loaded with tons of food, blankets and other aid, stepping up relief efforts to its earthquake-devastated neighbor.

Indian foreign secretary S. Jaishankar said the transport planes were carrying disaster management experts along with medical supplies and other relief material desperately needed in the wake of Saturday's deadly quake. 

A massive earthquake killed more than 1,200 people Saturday as it tore through large parts of Nepal, toppling office blocks and towers in Kathmandu and triggering a deadly avalanche at Everest base camp.

Officials said at least 1,170 people are known to have died in Nepal, making it the quake-prone Himalayan nation's worst disaster in more than 80 years.