Nearly 1,500 people, including more than 700 foreigners, are missing across Nepal and China’s Tibet, authorities said on Thursday, after a wall of mud and rock collapsed into a Himalayan river, causing catastrophic flash floods.
Rescuers in Nepal used helicopters to search for survivors and drop emergency supplies to thousands cut off in towns and valleys after Wednesday’s disaster swept a road thronged by trekkers and pilgrims that links Kathmandu with Lhasa in Tibet.
Police said they expected the death toll to rise beyond 165.
“This will go up, as we have resumed the search and more bodies are expected to be recovered,” police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told Reuters.
Almost 500 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism officials said.
Among the missing tourists from more than two dozen countries, 177 were from India, 63 were from the United States, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada.
Malaysia’s foreign ministry said 55 nationals were uncontactable but there was no official confirmation of casualties.
The tally of missing in Tibet’s Gyirong county was 558, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday, including 260 foreign nationals. China said the death toll stayed at three.
Verified videos showed crushing masses of water and debris sweeping away dozens of people at a border crossing in Gyirong, with homes, roads and power projects washed away in Nepal as the flows travelled downstream.
“It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us,” said Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor being treated in a Nepali hospital.
“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.”
A helicopter ferried him to safety four hours later. “My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud,” he added. “She’s gone.”
Another survivor said he saved himself by clinging to a mango tree as he watched the house where he had been working disappear.
In the hardest-hit districts, helicopters are dropping tents, food and other emergency supplies provided by neighbouring India, said Raja Ram Basnet, a spokesperson for Nepal’s army.
More than 5,000 army and police rescue personnel joined the rescue effort that retrieved 125 people on Thursday, including 20 foreigners, he said.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah left by road to assess the flood situation in one of the worst affected districts of Nuwakot, his office said on social media.
Early reports from Nepali officials suggested an earthquake in the area could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger the floods.
The US Geological Survey said an earthquake with magnitude initially reported as 4.4 was in fact seismic energy generated by the collapse of glacial rock and ice, followed by debris flow.
Chinese authorities have identified risks from a still-dammed lake in Gyirong, upstream from the mudslide and flood-stricken Tibet-Nepal border crossing that could complicate rescue efforts, particularly as rains are forecast, CCTV said.
