A glacier collapse in the Himalayas triggered a devastating mudslide, leaving 750 dead and over 3,000 missing along the Nepal-China border.
Authorities reported a massive flow of ice, rock, mud, and debris surged through mountain valleys and rivers on Wednesday, causing extensive damage. The Red Cross estimates over 90,000 individuals are believed to have been impacted by the disaster, which China attributes to climate-change impacts.
Rescue Efforts
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Nepalese counterpart during a Saturday telephone call that the mudslide was their “most severe cross-border disaster” in recent years. Rescue operations have risen to an unprecedented level of difficulty and complexity, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
According to Nepal’s disaster authority, the death toll stands at 734, with 2,498 still missing and 7,514 rescued. In China, officials reported 16 fatalities in Gyirong County and 546 individuals unaccounted for.
Challenges
The scale of the disaster has complicated rescue efforts in the challenging Himalayan environment. Nepal police informed Reuters that residents and rescue personnel evacuated to higher ground after the Trishuli River’s water levels rose in recent hours following fresh rainfall, heightening concerns of further flooding.
Rescue operations have been suspended several times since Friday because of adverse weather and concerns that a lake formed across the Nepal-China border by the disaster could trigger fresh flooding after it began overflowing into Nepal’s Lhende Khola and Trishuli Rivers.
International Assistance
Nepal needs international support in specialized fields such as tunnel rescue operations, DNA testing, refrigerated storage for bodies, and forensic identification of decomposed remains, stated Lok Bahadur Chhetri, a foreign ministry spokesperson.
Indian and Chinese specialists are already assisting in tunnel openings and rescue support, Chhetri mentioned. In Nepal, rescue operations are now concentrating on hundreds of individuals presumed trapped within tunnels at flood-damaged hydropower facilities.
As the rescue efforts continue, authorities in Nepal have begun mass burials of hundreds of unidentified victims whose bodies had started to decompose. In Chitwan district, bodies swept downstream from the flood-hit Rasuwa region have been carried by the river system into the Narayani River.
Authorities are documenting the bodies, gathering DNA samples, and logging identifying information to enable families to identify loved ones post-burial. “Of the bodies we have recovered so far, more than half are beyond recognition,” police officer Anil Thapa told Reuters.
China has deployed over 2,100 rescue personnel and allocated a minimum of 220 million yuan ($32.7 million) for relief initiatives.