Nepal floods: More than 1,000 killed as hundreds remain trapped in tunnels

Nepal’s death toll from devastating floods along the border with Tibet has surpassed 1,000, while rescuers race to locate thousands of people still missing.

More than 3,900 people remain unaccounted for, including over 600 workers believed to be trapped inside mud-filled tunnels at hydropower projects along the Trishuli River.

Rescue teams have been pumping air into the tunnels in an effort to keep those trapped alive. One team managed to enter one of the tunnels on Monday but was forced to withdraw after finding no survivors.

Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah said 279 people had so far been rescued from the hydropower sites. An international rescue effort involving Chinese and Nepalese military personnel is under way, with experts from India, South Korea and Australia also assisting.

Army personnel have been using explosives to clear huge boulders and debris blocking access to the tunnels. Australian tunnelling expert Arnold Dix described the affected area as resembling a “lunar landscape”, with some boulders reportedly larger than houses.

Families of missing workers have criticised the pace of the rescue operation and urged authorities to move faster.

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“The longer it takes, the more our hope dies,” Jiban Khadka, whose relative is trapped inside a hydropower plant, told local media.

At least 11 hydropower projects have been damaged by the floods, according to officials. Nepal depends heavily on hydropower and has developed numerous facilities along its mountainous river systems.

The disaster has also overwhelmed efforts to identify the dead. Only about 4% of the 900 bodies recovered so far have been identified, according to Nepal’s Ministry of Health.

In Chitwan, hundreds of bodies carried downstream by swollen rivers have been temporarily buried because authorities do not have enough refrigeration facilities. Medical workers and volunteers are collecting DNA samples to help identify the remains so they can eventually be returned to relatives.

Prime Minister Shah said the scale of the disaster highlighted the growing risks facing the Himalayan region because of climate change.

“This is not an ordinary incident,” he said, calling for greater international attention to the increasingly severe disasters affecting the region.

On the Tibetan side of the border, Chinese state media reported 16 deaths and 546 people missing. Access to information has been restricted, while authorities in both China and Nepal have moved to tackle what they describe as misinformation about the disaster.

(BBC News)