Rojita Adhikari, a freelance journalist and filmmaker from Nepal, told Al Jazeera that authorities are facing a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday [Saturday] I was at a press conference with Nepal\u2019s foreign minister and he said the country is struggling to store and identify dead bodies \u2013 whose numbers are mounting. He said Nepal does not have enough refrigerators to store the dead bodies and identify and test their DNA,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Unidentified bodies have been sent to 21 hospitals in different districts for preservation and identification, says the Kathmandu Post.<\/p>\n
Chinese authorities in Tibet told reporters that 16 people had died in Gyirong County, as of Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
As of Sunday morning, 2,498 people remain missing in Nepal. They include 589 foreigners and 127 Nepali citizens travelling with them, 45 personnel from Nepal\u2019s army, 27 from Nepal\u2019s police and 13 from the armed police force.<\/p>\n
Reporting from Nepal, Al Jazeera\u2019s Samer Allawi said Nepal\u2019s disaster management authorities have evacuated thousands of people, including foreign nationals, with the help of the army and police.<\/p>\n
In China\u2019s Tibet region, authorities said on Sunday that 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries are missing. They include 104 from Nepal, 49 from neighbouring India, as well as 33 Latvians, 18 Americans, 15 Britons, six from Canada, six from Australia, three each from Russia, Malaysia and Germany, 10 from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Estonia, France and Ireland and one each from Finland, Lithuania, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, Hungary and Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Yu said that getting a picture of the full scale of the devastation on the Chinese side of the border is difficult because foreign journalists are not allowed to enter the area. \u201cWe are completely reliant on the government and state media,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government says teams have desperately been searching the worst-hit area of the port of Gyirong since teams arrived there late on Friday after days of trekking through the mountains,\u201d she said, adding that they have \u201csearched at least 90,000 square metres using life monitoring equipment, search dogs and drones\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chinese authorities say that a team of hundreds of technical operators are using heavy machinery to slowly repair roads as access to the port of Gyirong is blocked following the flooding and landslides.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-08-30T062424Z_992674463_RC2T8NAEZDYS_RTRMADP_3_NEPAL-FLOODS-1788072931.jpg\")
A soldier at a Nepali army training centre in Trishuli in Nuwakot district helps evacuate flood victims [File: Francis Mascarenhas\/Reuters]What do we know about rescue efforts?<\/p>\n
Nepal and China are working together to identify missing citizens and foreign nationals.<\/p>\n
But the efforts have proven to be challenging, with roads and bridges destroyed.<\/p>\n
On Sunday morning, water levels in the Trishuli River rose after more rain, prompting residents and rescue workers to seek higher ground, a Nepalese police official said.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Allawi said authorities \u201chave not yet moved to the second phase of relief operations, which includes humanitarian assistance and reopening roads\u201d, because of \u201cthe rugged terrain and the lack of sufficient resources\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that Nepal\u2019s finance minister [Swarnim Wagle] estimated losses from the disaster at \u201cmore than $4bn\u201d, while warnings remain in force for potential flooding along rivers in northern Nepal.<\/p>\n
\u201cLocal relief efforts are also very limited because of the difficulty of reaching the affected areas,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cdozens of kilometres of roads have been destroyed, as well as bridges over rivers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Minelle Fernandez, reporting from the Nepalese capital, said the government has requested specialist help from India and China to \u201cfill gaps\u201d in its rescue operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason the [Nepalese] foreign ministry spokesman said that this decision has been taken is because lives are at stake and that it is very, very urgent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason that initially Nepal had said they didn\u2019t want assistance is they didn\u2019t want the chaos which comes with huge teams being fanned out in different areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-08-30T100622Z_520297392_RC2X8NAFC30J_RTRMADP_3_NEPAL-FLOODS-1788084465.jpg\")
An undated handout photo of rescue workers taking part in a rescue operation near the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project, following deadly flash floods and mudslides, in Rasuwa, Nepal [Nepal Prime Minister\u2019s Office\/Handout via Reuters]<\/p>\n
Nepali journalist Adhikari accused world leaders of not prioritising the threats posed by the climate crisis. \u201cThis catastrophe is not Nepal\u2019s fault. The country is paying the price for how world leaders have been dealing with climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNepal has had floods and disasters like earthquakes before, but I have never seen anything like what happened on Wednesday. Entire families have been swept away. People are devastated and have lost everything \u2013 their property, their security, their lifelines. They have no homes to return to in the flood-affected areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
China has mobilised 2,100 rescue workers and allocated at least 220 million yuan ($32.7m) to support relief efforts, according to CCTV news. Beijing is also using heavy-lift drones and helicopters to airdrop equipment and supplies to frontline rescuers near the border crossing.<\/p>\n
International aid has arrived from the United Nations, the Red Cross Federation, Australia, India, South Korea and the United States.<\/p>\n
The US and Canada said they would provide $3.6m each in humanitarian aid. The United Kingdom has offered $6.8m in aid, while the UN released $2.5m in emergency funding.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the European Union pledged $2.3m and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said it had allocated more than $1m and launched an emergency appeal for $31m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death toll from devastating floods near the border between Nepal and China has risen to at least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1177097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[521,11410,1395,7029,4174,16835,140982,12,26],"class_list":["post-1177096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-asia","tag-asia-pacific","tag-china","tag-climate","tag-climate-crisis","tag-floods","tag-nepal","tag-news","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117184127792047238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1177097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}