Kathmandu, Aug 31: The death toll from the devastating flash floods in Nepal rose to 939 on Monday, with bodies continuing to be recovered, while around 4,000 people are still missing, authorities said.
More than 10,000 people have been rescued so far, as search teams struggle to reach those still stranded amid intermittent rain, swollen rivers and damaged roads and bridges.
The flash floods, triggered by a collapse or avalanche of ice and rock near the Nepal-Tibet border, devastated towns and villages in northern and central Nepal on August 26.
The Bhotekoshi River, which flows south from the Himalayan border region, carried the floodwaters downstream, sweeping away homes, vehicles, roads and bridges and damaging hydropower projects.
The disaster also killed 16 people on the Chinese side, while nearly 550 people remain missing in Tibet, according to Chinese media reports.
Rescue teams are trying to trace 639 workers and employees in various hydropower project sites in Nepal’s flood-hit areas, of which many are believed to be trapped in tunnels, authorities said on Monday.
A controlled blast was carried out in one of the sites as rescuers struggled to access a blocked tunnel. Expert teams from India and China are assisting the rescuers in these operations.
Kathmandu has sought additional international support, including specialised equipment and technical assistance for tunnel rescue and forensic work.
Nepal’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lok Bahadur Chhetri said in a press briefing on Monday that the country has sought essential non-food items and services such as freezers, DNA testing kits and LiDAR from the US, relief-specific items like DVI from Singapore, and belly bridges and high-capacity drones from China and Singapore.
So far, Nepal has received airtight bags for the management of bodies, while more are also being delivered.
A team of 18 forensic experts from India, specialising in DNA analysis, has also been in Nepal since Saturday, to assist officials as the death toll continues to rise.
As many as 279 bodies were recovered in Nepal’s Chitawan district, 216 in Nawalparasi East, 168 in Nawalparasi West, 95 in Nuwakot, 65 in Gorkha, 55 in Dhading, 38 in Tanahu and 23 in Rasuwa, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said on Monday.
Hospitals across Nepal have been witnessing crowds of people looking for their missing relatives. The focus is increasingly shifting towards identifying the dead. Photographs have been pasted outside hospital walls, where huge gatherings could be seen scanning them.
Only a few dozen of the hundreds of bodies recovered were identified till Monday, with authorities saying many remains are badly decomposed, mutilated or otherwise difficult to recognise after prolonged exposure to floodwaters.
Of the 3,925 people still missing in Nepal, at least 590 are foreigners from 39 countries, including India, officials said on Monday. They also include 83 security personnel.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi on Saturday said that more than 275 Indians and 128 persons of Indian origin remained missing or non-contactable in Nepal. On Sunday, the MEA on its X handle shared a list of 149 people who were rescued.
The 10,451 people rescued from Nepal’s flood-affected areas till Monday, includes locals and tourists from multiple countries, including India, the US, China, Russia, the UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Malta, Turkiye, Switzerland and Portugal, officials said.
The Nepalese government has mobilised more than 21,000 security personnel for search and rescue operations, while helicopters have been making repeated sorties to evacuate stranded people and deliver relief supplies.
Nineteen motorable bridges and several highways and arterial roads were washed away. One of them was Nepal’s main land trade link with China as well as the Rasuwagadhi border crossing connecting the two nations.
On Monday, authorities said a landslide briefly blocked the Budhi Gandaki River in Gorkha district before water flow resumed, while injured people rescued from flood-hit Rasuwa continued to receive treatment in Kathmandu.
Nepal is also battling a deluge of misinformation, alongside rescue and relief operations as fake and AI-generated visuals inundated social media following the devastating flash floods, prompting the government to order 72 users to remove inappropriate content over the past few days.
The Nepal Press Council, the country’s media regulatory body, has opened a dedicated portal, titled “Special Complaints on the Bhotekoshi Incident”, through which the public can report misinformation and graphic material related to the disaster, The Kathmandu Post reported on Monday.
The move comes as social media platforms have been inundated with dramatic videos and images purportedly showing the destruction caused by the floods.
While some of the footage were genuine, fact-checkers found that several of them were from disasters in other countries, recycled from earlier events or generated or manipulated using artificial intelligence, the report said. (PTI)
