Rescue teams in Nepal are still trying to contact the more than 900 people believed to be trapped in hydropower construction sites, six days after a flash flood devastated the country’s northern mountainous region bordering Tibet.
The death toll in Nepal has climbed to 903, the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said Monday morning. It said 4,247 people are still missing, of whom 933 are workers at the various hydropower project sites along the Trishuli river.
Nepali Army rescue teams, aided by specialist teams from India and China, are in a desperate race against time to rescue those trapped in the tunnels in Chilime, Langtang, and Upper Trishuli 3A projects in the Trishuli corridor.
Rescue teams identified the Upper Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project tunnel’s upper arc after working with drilling machines, excavators, and hydraulic cutters for three days and entered it Sunday. But the tunnel is filled with water and rescuers received no response from anyone trapped inside, the Kathmandu Post reported.
The rescuers are trying again after deploying high-pressure water pumps. The remains of one person were retrieved from one of the tunnels on Sunday.
Some 592 foreigners are also among the missing in Nepal. Twenty-two foreigners, from China and India, were rescued on Sunday.
Battle to Rescue People Trapped Inside Tunnel in Nepal Intensifiespic.twitter.com/I40NRqptYi
”Our country has been facing an unimaginable and heartbreaking natural disaster,” Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah said in a social media post late Sunday.
The floods were reportedly triggered by a glacier collapse on the Chinese side of the border, with the Bhote Kashi river flooding and washing away several villages, dams, bridges, and roads last Wednesday.
”For years, scientists and local communities have been warning that the Hindu Kush Himalayas are at huge risk from climate change,” said UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell, who called the disaster “absolutely heartbreaking.”
“We also know a warming climate, driven by humanity burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, is making tragedies like this one, and so many others around the world, much more likely, frequent and severe, with vulnerable communities often hardest hit,” he added.
The threat of flooding still looms over the affected areas. On Sunday, the Trushuli river swelled for a few hours again, washing away a bridge. Rescue efforts were paused briefly on Friday after warnings that a barrier dam had breached on the upper reaches of the Bhote Kashi.
Across the border in China, where the Gyirong border port was buried in mud, officials have reported 16 deaths, and 546 people missing – with 261 of them foreign citizens.
Among them are 49 people from India; 33 are Latvians; 18 from the United States; 15 from Britain; six each from Canada and Australia; four from South Africa; three each from Malaysia, Germany, and Russia; two from Ireland, Estonia, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand; and one each from Kazakhstan, Finland, Lithuania, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, and Hungary.
Chinese officials said no foreigners were stranded in the area.
More than 400 Indians crossed over into India from China on Sunday, the Indian Foreign Ministry said.
An Indian team in Kathmandu is conducting DNA analysis to identify the flood victims.
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