Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said on X that 4,247 people are currently unaccounted for, including 592 foreign nationals. The previous toll stood at 752 dead and about 2,500 missing.
Nearly 21,000 security and military personnel are involved in search-and-rescue operations, backed by tunnel rescue specialists from neighboring India and China.
Rescuers are prioritizing efforts to reach 933 missing workers from hydropower construction sites trapped in six underground tunnels in river valleys near the Tibetan border. Heavy machinery and military rescue brigades are working around the clock to clear mud and rock after access roads were cut off and communications disrupted. Continuing rainfall has hampered the effort. About 280 construction workers have been rescued so far.
Nepal's Prime Minister, Balendra Shah, described the flood as an "unprecedented and devastating natural disaster". In a Facebook post Sunday evening, he wrote: "Despite bad weather, difficult terrain and ongoing dangers, we are moving forward with determination to save the lives of our citizens".
More than 10,451 people have been rescued nationwide. Among the survivors was 5-year-old Manisha, who was trapped under the rubble of a collapsed house in Rasuwa district for more than 60 hours. According to local media, rescuers initially believed they heard a trapped cat before a two-hour operation freed the exhausted girl. She is recovering in a Kathmandu hospital from facial and back injuries.
Facing a growing epidemiological risk and overcrowded morgues, Nepali authorities have begun mass burials of unidentified victims. Reuters reported that bodies are being taken to mass graves in the Devghat forest in Chitwan district, roughly 200 kilometers from the devastated Rasuwa valley. Before burial, Nepali authorities, assisted by a forensic team from India, are collecting DNA samples and cataloging each grave's location to allow families to later identify their relatives.
The disaster began Wednesday, Aug. 26, when a large mudslide swept through Rasuwa district after a chunk of a glacier broke off above a Himalayan river. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the landslide triggered a seismic event of magnitude 5.2 and set off flash floods that swept down valleys on both the Nepali and Chinese sides of the border.
Authorities in Chinese-controlled Tibet have reported 16 deaths and 546 people missing, including 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries. That brings the combined death toll from Wednesday's disaster to 919.
(jh)
Source: PAP