More than 175 people have been killed and over 1,300 left missing on either side of the Nepal-Tibet border after a wall of mud and water tore through the Bhotekoshi valley on August 26, with about a hundred Europeans among the missing.
The Nepal Police said 177 bodies had been recovered by the afternoon of August 27, among them 69 in Chitwan, far downstream. It said 33 people had been taken to hospital and more than 3,300 officers deployed.
Nepali authorities listed 826 people as missing, 517 of them foreign. Chinese state media reported a further 558 missing, including 260 foreigners, at the Gyirong border crossing in Tibet.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Nepal’s tourist police considered 53 Ukrainians to be missing, among them a group of 46 travellers with whom contact was lost as the flood struck.
The Nepal Tourism Board put the number of missing Britons at 33. The Kathmandu operator Alpine Eco Trek said 12 of them, including a 13-year-old girl, had been on one of its expeditions.
Two Irish nationals travelling with the same firm were also unaccounted for. Irish foreign minister Helen McEntee said her department stood ready to assist citizens through the Embassy of Ireland in India, which covers Nepal.
Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares said four Spaniards had not been located, though no Spanish deaths had been recorded. Albares, who could not account for 164 Spaniards after the Colombian earthquake on August 10, asked relatives of anyone in the area to call the ministry’s consular emergency unit.
The tourism board also named Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden among the countries with citizens unaccounted for. Italy said two of its nationals and their guide were stranded above a landslide but were receiving help.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union’s Copernicus satellite service had been activated to map the affected areas and that the bloc stood ready to mobilise further assistance. The EU delegation in Kathmandu joined the embassies of Australia, Finland, France, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in a statement saying they were “deeply saddened” by the flooding.
The United States Geological Survey first recorded a magnitude 4.4 earthquake near the border but later said the tremor had been a magnitude 5.2 glacial collapse. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said an ice and rock avalanche had blocked the Lhende Khola, sending down a surge that raised the Trishuli by nine metres in half an hour.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah said the army had delivered food, tents and medicines overnight and that private helicopters had joined the search. Rescuers brought out 125 people on August 27, among them 20 foreigners.
