KATHMANDU, Aug 28 (Reuters) – Nepal does not need foreign assistance for search-and-rescue operations following the devastating flash flood that swept through several towns, its \u200cforeign ministry said on Friday, despite offers of help from several countries with \u200cnationals missing in the disaster.<\/p>\n
The flood tore through areas including Rasuwa district near the Chinese border, levelling \u200bentire towns, damaging hydropower projects and killing close to 500 people. Hundreds of foreign nationals are still missing, including from South Korea, which said it has already sent a response team to Nepal and will also dispatch a disaster relief team.<\/p>\n
But Nepal’s foreign ministry said \u200con Friday that it was \u2060managing the rescue efforts.<\/p>\n
“The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don’t \u2060require such help,” Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, said without providing further details.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s foreign ministry said Nepal had indicated it was not yet planning to accept foreign \u200brescue teams.<\/p>\n
“South \u200bKorea will keep negotiating with Nepal over \u200bthe matter,” the ministry added.<\/p>\n
Seoul has \u200cpledged $1 million in humanitarian assistance through international organisations, its foreign minister said on X.<\/p>\n
Nine South Koreans working in a hydropower plant were missing and 10 were stranded, South Korea’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Kathmandu Post reported that India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had asked the government to allow \u200ctheir search-and-rescue teams to assist in the operation.<\/p>\n
Dinesh Bhattarai, \u200ba former Nepali ambassador to the United Nations \u200bin Geneva, said the government’s reluctance \u200bto accept foreign search-and-rescue teams may be linked to the sensitivity \u200cof flood-hit Rasuwa district, which borders China’s \u200bTibet region.<\/p>\n
“They may have \u200bthought about the locational sensitivity of the region and decided not to accept foreign teams,” Bhattarai told Reuters.<\/p>\n
But Chhetri said the decision had nothing to do \u200bwith China’s sensitivity because \u200cNepal’s own rescue teams were handling the operation.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu \u200band Heejin Kim in Seoul; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Anil D’Silva; \u200bEditing by Christian Schmollinger and Saad Sayeed)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KATHMANDU, Aug 28 (Reuters) – Nepal does not need foreign assistance for search-and-rescue operations following the devastating flash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[68686,68684,68683,25784,68682,31,68275,13213,33,6644,6743,68685],"class_list":["post-135255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-aug-28","tag-bhattarai","tag-chhetri","tag-friday","tag-kathmandu","tag-korea","tag-rasuwa-district","tag-reuters","tag-south-korea","tag-south-koreas","tag-south-koreans","tag-the-kathmandu-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}