Death toll in Nepal flooding rises to 903
The death toll in last week’s devastating flooding in Nepal has risen to 903 people, officials said Monday, as the number of those listed as missing nearly doubled to 4,247, reports BritPanorama.
Among the missing are 592 foreign nationals, according to an update from Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott stated on Sunday that around 85 Americans are still unaccounted for.
Rescuers continue to face significant challenges in reaching affected communities days after the catastrophic flooding, which resulted from a glacier collapse in the Nepal-Tibet border region on Wednesday.
Ferrin Cole, an operations director at the U.S.-based Crisis Response International, described the situation, saying, “The disaster here is overwhelming. The flood that came down that mountain just wiped out cities. We’re going in as fast as we can to get people the help that they need.”
The flooding has impacted over 90,000 people, the Nepal Red Cross reported. Morgues in Nepal have been overwhelmed, with a local police officer indicating that “more than half” of the bodies recovered in Chitwan district were “beyond recognition.”
In Tibet, China has reported 16 deaths and 546 people missing, which includes hundreds of foreign nationals. The extent of overlap between the Chinese and Nepali missing-person counts remains unclear.
Nepali officials report that over 10,400 individuals have been rescued, including 277 foreign nationals. Complicating the rescue efforts, a landslide-dammed lake above the border checkpoint is overflowing, although China’s state-run media, CCTV, stated that the likelihood of a complete breach is “relatively low.”
Meanwhile, persistent heavy rain in Nepal has raised river levels, prompting new warnings for those residing along waterways.
