{"id":663884,"date":"2026-08-30T16:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/663884\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T16:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:12:14","slug":"death-toll-from-nepal-tibet-floods-reaches-781-with-more-than-3000-still-missing-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/663884\/","title":{"rendered":"Death toll from Nepal-Tibet floods reaches 781, with more than 3,000 still missing \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rescuers in Nepal<\/a> and China<\/a> raced on Sunday to find thousands of people missing after \u200ca glacier collapse unleashed a catastrophic mudslide<\/a> across the Himalayas, as they faced challenging weather conditions and rising water levels.<\/p>\n

Authorities said the death toll rose to nearly 800 on Sunday, with more than 3,000 people missing on both sides \u200bof the Nepal-China border after a torrent of ice, rock, mud and debris swept through mountain valleys and rivers on Wednesday, causing widespread devastation.<\/p>\n

The Red Cross has estimated that more than 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the disaster, which China has linked to the effects of climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi told his Nepalese counterpart during a Saturday telephone call that the mudslide was their \u201cmost severe cross-border disaster\u201d in recent years and that rescue operations \u200bhad risen to an unprecedented level of difficulty and complexity, state broadcaster CCTV reported.<\/p>\n

How deadly flash floods hit Nepal-Tibet border. Video: Reuters <\/p>\n

Nepal\u2019s disaster authority said 781 people had died, with 2,502 missing. On the Chinese side, authorities said 16 people were killed in Gyirong county and 546 were \u2060missing.<\/p>\n

Beijing said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were unaccounted for in Tibet<\/a>, near a key border crossing with Nepal.<\/p>\n

The scale of the disaster has complicated \u200crescue \u200cefforts across \u200bthe rugged Himalayan terrain.<\/p>\n

Local police in Nepal told Reuters that residents and rescue workers had moved to higher ground after the Trishuli river\u2019s water levels rose in recent hours following fresh rainfall, raising fears of additional flooding.<\/p>\n

\"SubmergedSubmerged houses along the banks of the Trishuli river in Dhading district, Nepal, on Sunday. Photograph: Narendra Shrstha\/EPA <\/p>\n

Rescue operations have been suspended several times since Friday because of bad weather \u2060and concerns that a lake formed across the Nepal-China border by the disaster \u200bcould trigger fresh flooding after it began overflowing into Nepal\u2019s Lhende Khola and Trishuli rivers.<\/p>\n

CCTV reported \u200bthat the lake threatening downstream areas had been largely drained by Saturday evening. But drones detected a landslide late on Saturday 2.8km downstream of the lake, forming a new \u200cdam and a fresh pool of water.<\/p>\n

In Nepal, rescue efforts have become \u200bmore focused on hundreds of people believed to be trapped inside tunnels at hydropower plants damaged by the floods.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Nepal flash flood: Irish citizens named on list of missing touristsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Lok Bahadur Chhetri, a spokesperson for Nepal\u2019s foreign ministry, said Nepal required international \u2060assistance in specialised areas, including tunnel rescue operations, DNA testing, refrigerated storage for bodies \u2060and forensic identification of decomposed remains.<\/p>\n

Indian and Chinese \u200bexperts were already working to help open tunnels and support rescue operations, Chhetri said.<\/p>\n

Days after desperate relatives moved between hospitals, morgues and relief centres searching for loved ones, authorities in Nepal began mass burials of hundreds of unidentified victims whose bodies had started to decompose.<\/p>\n

In Chitwan district, which escaped the direct impact of the disaster, bodies swept downstream from the flood-hit Rasuwa region have been carried by the river system into the Narayani river.<\/p>\n

Authorities are photographing the bodies, collecting DNA samples and recording identifying details in the hope that families may still be able to identify relatives after burial.<\/p>\n

\"PolicePolice and army personnel wearing hazmat suits bury unidentified bodies recovered from the floods at a mass burial site in the Devghat Forest on in Bharatpur, Nepal, on Sunday. Photograph: Ezra Acayan\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cOf the bodies we have recovered so far, more than half are beyond recognition,\u201d police officer Anil Thapa told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany have no visible faces. In some cases, only hands or legs remain; in others, only parts of the body are available. In many \u200ccases, more than half of the head \u2060is missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

After burying more than 100 unidentified bodies on Saturday, authorities were digging additional graves on Sunday for hundreds more.<\/p>\n

The flood was \u201ccaused by glacier instability under the long-term effects of global warming\u201d, CCTV reported, saying it was a \u201cnew and prominent feature of cryosphere disasters\u201d on the Tibetan plateau.<\/p>\n

The mudslide from \u200cthe Nepalese side took six to seven minutes to reach the Gyirong border crossing, CCTV said, citing the findings of Chinese scientists. Dramatic surveillance footage shared worldwide showed torrents of water and debris engulfing buildings while people tried to \u200bflee.<\/p>\n

The state-run TV channel reported China has mobilised more than 2,100 rescue workers and allocated at least 220 million yuan (\u20ac28 million) to \u200bsupport relief efforts and has been airdropping equipment and supplies to frontline rescuers, while its soldiers used life-detection equipment to look for the missing. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rescuers in Nepal and China raced on Sunday to find thousands of people missing after \u200ca glacier collapse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,381,442,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,8396,5,21767,7,8,1102,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-663884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-nepal","tag-news","tag-tibet","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-weather-events","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117185344290451512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}