Number of missing in deadly Nepal, China floods soars past 2,400<\/p>\n
The death toll has risen to more than 600, says Nepal police, as\nsearch and rescue teams battle muddy conditions to reach survivors in\naffected areas.<\/p>\n
NUWAKOT, Nepal: Rescuers in Nepal and China were still battling\nSaturday (Aug 29) to locate thousands of people missing days after a\ndeadly, tsunami-like wall of water and debris swept through the\nHimalayan region, engulfing villages.<\/p>\n
The number of missing soared past 2,400 on Friday, with the death\ntoll rising to 626, according to Nepal police. Emergency teams earlier\nsaid they had recovered 586 bodies, with some of the dead swept\ndownstream as far away as India.<\/p>\n
In an area home to vast energy infrastructure projects, Nepal\u2019s\ndisaster authority added 933 hydropower workers to a missing persons\nlist already including trekkers and pilgrims to Tibet\u2019s sacred Mount\nKailash.<\/p>\n
Those that made it out say they have lost everything and now face an\nagonising wait to discover the fate of missing loved ones, and the\nprospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing\nleft,\u201d survivor Buddhi Ram Dangol told AFP.<\/p>\n
Samjhana Thing said she had been waiting three days for news of her\nmissing brother.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know anything. Hopefully he is in a safe place,\u201d she\nsaid.<\/p>\n
\u201cENORMOUS\u201d TRAUMA<\/p>\n
The trauma of Wednesday\u2019s catastrophe has been \u201cenormous\u201d, and as\nmany as 93,000 people may have been affected, the Red Cross said, with\nthe death toll expected to rise.<\/p>\n
Emergency teams had been racing to retrieve survivors from affected\nzones, where the widespread devastation meant food and water supplies\nwere running out.<\/p>\n
Compounding the search for the missing have been fears of further\nflooding in affected areas.<\/p>\n
The deluge of ice and mud caused huge lakes to form, and one of these\nformations has become a direct threat to emergency workers scouring the\nregion for survivors.<\/p>\n
Nepali police urged all rescuers to \u201cimmediately move to a safe\nlocation\u201d, saying they had received information that \u201ca water dam has\nburst again on the Tibetan side\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Tibet, where Chinese authorities are the only source of\ninformation, Beijing suspended its rescue operation at the hardest-hit\narea of Gyirong over the risk of renewed flooding, before saying the\nthreat had eased.<\/p>\n
State news agency Xinhua reported early Saturday morning that two\nvillagers had been rescued in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cALL SWEPT AWAY\u201d<\/p>\n
On the Nepali side of the border, the military located people trapped\nin the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A hydropower project, where they were\nworking to find a way in to extract the survivors.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo helicopters have been dispatched but it is challenging because\nit is tough to even locate the entry points of the tunnel,\u201d army\nspokesman Raja Ram Basnet told AFP.<\/p>\n
Some 350 workers and residents have been brought to safety from the\nsite, he added, but efforts were ongoing to rescue more than 100 people\ntrapped in the same area.<\/p>\n
Workers rescued from other dam projects along the Trishuli valley\ndescribed a disaster that unfolded with terrifying speed.<\/p>\n
Buddha Tamang told AFP he survived only because he was inside a\ntunnel at the dam where he worked when the flood struck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe senior officers working on the other side, they were all swept\naway,\u201d Tamang, who was airlifted on Thursday after being marooned for\nmore than 24 hours, told AFP.<\/p>\n
Nepal reported a death toll of 579 people on Friday.<\/p>\n
There are 1,924 people, including 517 foreigners, who are out of\ncontact in Nepal, the disaster authority said. The previous missing\nfigure was 977.<\/p>\n
In India, authorities said they had recovered seven bodies from\nrivers flowing from Nepal, believed to be flood victims.<\/p>\n
Across the border in Tibet, which is largely inaccessible to foreign\njournalists and where the only sources of information are Chinese\nauthorities, seven died and 554 remain missing, the state Xinhua news\nagency reported early Saturday.<\/p>\n
Authorities also said they had evacuated 555 stranded tourists and\n499 Chinese residents from Tibet.<\/p>\n
PILGRIMAGE ROUTE<\/p>\n
Scores of Hindu devotees from across the world are among those\nmissing on the border, as many were on a pilgrimage to Tibet\u2019s Mount\nKailash.<\/p>\n
Sivaranjani Muthunathan was travelling by bus with 56 others towards\nthe Chinese border when they became stuck in what they thought was a\ntraffic jam.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen there was fog, smoke, something that seemed to suddenly engulf\nus,\u201d Muthunathan, 46, told AFP on Friday, showing a phone video she\nrecorded of a torrent surging towards her.<\/p>\n
Around them, vehicles were swept away or buried under mud.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne by one, we also climbed out through the driver\u2019s side,\u201d then\nscrambled up a hill, she said.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/number-of-missing-in-deadly-nepal-china-floods-soars-past-2-400-1787975416", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }