Nepal death toll rises to 903; 4,247 missing

KATHMANDU, September 1 ------ Devastating floods near the border with China have killed at least 903 people in Nepal, while the number of missing in the country has soared to 4,247, its disaster authority said, as rescue efforts entered a sixth day.

Chinese state media earlier confirmed 16 dead and 546 people missing in Tibet following Wednesday’s disaster, taking the overall toll to 919 dead and 4,793 missing.

Nepal’s list of the missing includes 592 foreigners. It also includes 933 workers on hydropower projects along the river, which the torrent crashed through, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. Nepal’s disaster agency listed 3,655 missing citizens in its update on Monday morning. That includes Nuwakot district, where the missing rose sharply to 1,158, up from 115 reported on Sunday, as well as a further 562 unaccounted in Rasuwa district. The missing includes 45 Nepali army soldiers, 38 police and armed police officers, and 19 customs and immigration officers.

In India, authorities in Uttar Pradesh state said they had recovered 17 bodies from rivers flowing from Nepal, believed to be flood victims. Indian authorities are seeking to identify the bodies, and they are not included in the toll.

‘Swept away’

Survivors were faced with the daunting prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing. “All the settlements near the river were swept away,” resident Buddhi Ram Dangol told AFP in Nepal’s Nuwakot district. “There is nothing left.”

The United States and Canada said they would provide $3.6 million each in humanitarian aid to Nepal. The UK has offered $6.8 million, while the UN released $2.5 million in emergency funding, and aid pledges were made by the European Union, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and others.

Nepal’s economy is already under pressure, with limited resources to respond to a disaster of this scale. Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said the reconstruction bill could run into “billions of dollars.” He appealed for specialized assistance, including heavy-lift drones and technology to help locate people who are trapped. Khanal also called for forensic testing kits to identify corpses and freezer units to store them, saying bodies that have been in water could decompose at a faster rate.

The minister has highlighted the inequity that Nepal should suffer the extreme impacts of climate change when it has one of the world’s lowest per-capita carbon emissions. That is due to its location in the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range, where glaciers are melting at rapid speed as the planet heats.

In Tibet, which is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists and where Chinese authorities are the only source of information, a total of 2,141 personnel has joined search and rescue operations.

Source: manilatimes.net