Nepal and China flood missing toll nears 3,000

Rescuers in Nepal and China were battling yesterday to locate thousands of people missing days after a deadly, tsunami-like wall of water and debris swept through the Himalayan region, engulfing entire villages.

Figures from both countries put the number of missing close to 3,000, with 633 bodies recovered — and reports of some dead possibly swept downstream as far away as India.

Rescue worker Kawan Koirala, from the Nepal Scout Disaster Response Team, said they were struggling in thick, leg-sucking mud.

“People want their family member’s body back, either dead or alive, but we cannot find them... You can see the mud,” he said, exhausted after an 18-hour shift. “It is very traumatic for me too. It is my first time seeing these types of things. Everywhere is mud. We faced flood in Nepal before, but not like this.”

The US Geological Survey said the disaster on Wednesday on the Tibet-Nepal border was caused by a glacial collapse that created a torrent of debris downstream.

While the exact cause of the collapse is unclear, climate change is causing glaciers to melt worldwide, increasing the risks of such disasters.

Survivors face an agonizing wait to learn the fate of missing relatives, and the prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing.

“All the settlements near the river were swept away,” Buddhi Ram Dangol said in Nuwakot, Nepal. “There is nothing left.”

At Bidur’s army base, a key rescue hub in the same district, relatives crowded around lists of rescued people pasted on a wall.

“I have come here looking for my son,” Kalka Sharda said, scanning the list in desperation. “He was a laborer at the hydropower plant, but I can’t find his name, and the authorities are not saying anything.”

In an area home to vast energy infrastructure projects, Nepal’s disaster authority listed 933 hydropower workers among the missing, along with 517 foreigners, including trekkers and Hindu pilgrims to Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash.

The trauma of Wednesday’s catastrophe has been “enormous,” and as many as 93,000 people might have been affected, the Red Cross said, with the death toll expected to rise.

Nepal’s reconstruction bill after devastating floods could run into “billions of dollars,” Nepalese Minister of Foreign Affairs Shisir Khanal said on Saturday.

“The urgency is on rescue and saving lives as much as we can,” he added, appealing for specialized assistance, including heavy-lift drones and technology to help locate people who are trapped.

He also called for forensic testing kits to identify bodies and freezer units to store them, saying bodies which have been in water could decompose at a faster rate.

“Our own healthcare capacity is very limited to put these bodies in a frozen state for a long time,” he said.

Emergency teams worked flat-out to find survivors as widespread devastation left communities short of food and water.

Fears of further flooding have compounded the search for the missing.

The deluge of ice and mud caused huge lakes, and one of these formations has become a risk of further floods.

In Tibet, where Chinese authorities are the only source of information, Beijing had paused its rescue operation at the hardest-hit area of Gyirong over the risk of renewed flooding.

On the Nepali side, soldiers were yesterday trying desperately to drill through to 100 people trapped in tunnels, including at the Trishuli 3A and 3B hydropower projects.

The Nepalese prime minister’s office said teams had begun “clearing mud and debris” to open the entrance, while a specialized Indian tunnel rescue unit had arrived to help.

Workers rescued from other dam projects along the Trishuli valley described a disaster that unfolded with terrifying speed.

Nepal yesterday reported a death toll of 626 people.

There are 2,426 people, including hundreds of foreigners, who are out of contact in the country.

Across the border in Tibet, which is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists, seven people died and 554 remain missing, the state Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

Authorities also said they had evacuated 555 stranded tourists and 499 Chinese residents from Tibet.

In India, officials said they had recovered seven bodies from rivers flowing from Nepal, believed to be flood victims.

China deployed a record number of coast guard, scientific research and other ships near Taiwan’s waters last month, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said, as Beijing dials up pressure on Taipei. The coast guard warned of an increasingly severe situation, as analysts say the increased activity is part of China’s bid to map the region for submarine warfare. The number of Chinese ships detected around Taiwan proper soared to a record 244 last month — an average of nearly eight every day, official data showed.

That compares with 55 ships detected in June and 30 in May, and 58 in July last year. In

DELUGE: The Tainan City Government requested five mobile water pumps from the central government to supplement the 511 pumps it had already prepared Torrential rain caused by the combined effects of southwesterly winds and a low-pressure belt battered southern Taiwan yesterday, causing widespread flooding across Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County. More than 2,300 people were evacuated as authorities warned of continued heavy rain through tomorrow.

Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County yesterday announced that work and classes would remain suspended today for the second consecutive day amid heavy rain and flooding. Chiayi, Hualien and Taitung counties later last night also announced that work and classes would be canceled today. The Kaohsiung City Government said it expected cumulative rainfall over the five-day period of the low-pressure system to

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The storm’s outer bands, combined with strengthening southwesterly winds, are expected to bring heavy rain to southern and southeastern Taiwan today, it said. As the storm approaches Matsu,

LIMITED: The bill’s NT$40bn annual spending cap would prevent Taiwan from effectively building up its drone combat capabilities, National Defense Minister Wellington Koo said The legislature yesterday rejected the Executive Yuan’s NT$210 billion (US$6.62 billion) special budget proposal to buy military drones and instead passed its own plan, which earmarks NT$40 billion per year over six consecutive years. The Executive Yuan said its plan to buy about 210,000 drones by 2031 could not wait, as the wars in Ukraine and Iran showed the importance of uncrewed systems in modern warfare amid a rising threat from China.

However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their opposition majority to pass a bill providing NT$240 billion through annual budgets over six years, with annual