The death toll from catastrophic flash floods along the border between Nepal and Tibet has risen to at least 165, while nearly 1,400 people were missing.
Rescue teams were searching for survivors on Thursday, a day after a glacial collapse sent a huge wall of mud and rock barreling through the Himalayan communities, sweeping way entire villages.
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Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said 826 people were missing in the country, almost 600 of them foreign nationals.
In Tibet, Chinese broadcaster CCTV reported 558 people missing in Gyirong county, including 260 foreigners. Three deaths had been confirmed there as of Thursday morning, with two villagers rescued.
What do we know about the flood in Nepal and Tibet?
The disaster struck Wednesday when a glacial collapse triggered a flood in the Lhende Khola river, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi, in a corridor popular with trekkers and pilgrims connecting Kathmandu with Lhasa.
Nepal police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told Reuters the death toll was expected to keep climbing: “This will go up, as we have resumed the search and more bodies are expected to be recovered.”
Among those missing in Nepal were large numbers of foreign tourists.
Sunil Sharma, a tourism board spokesperson, told the AP news agency that 133 of the missing were Indian pilgrims traveling to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a site sacred to Hindus, alongside 47 Americans, 34 Australians, 33 Britons and 24 Canadians.
Reuters cited a slightly different breakdown from police and tourism officials, putting the missing tourists at 177 from India, 63 from the United States, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada.
Survivors describe scale of destruction
As the scale of the disaster became apparent on Thursday, locals recounted a torrent of mud rushing toward them.
“As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher. When I saw it enter our home, I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud,” Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor, told Reuters.
He was rescued by helicopter four hours later. “My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud.”
“She’s gone,” he said.
Sagar Pandey, who heads a Himalayan tourism operator, surveyed the area by helicopter and saw that entire settlements had vanished.
“There are no human-made things, no human settlement left. Everything is just flat. So anyone in the hotel, the restaurant, or the car, I believe that everybody is gone,” he told Reuters.
More than 5,000 army and police personnel have been mobilized in Nepal, according to army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet. They were using helicopters to drop supplies, including tents, food and more, donated by India to communities cut off by the disaster.
More to come on this developing story…
Edited by: Karl Sexton
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