Nepal-China Floods Kill Nearly 600, Thousands Missing

Rescuers pulled survivors caked in dark brown mud from the wreckage of a Himalayan border crossing, as the death toll from catastrophic flash floods in Nepal and China climbed past 550 with nearly 2,500 people missing. Helicopters airlifted stranded residents while teams on foot and raft forced their way into the Gyirong Port area on the Chinese side of the border.

A rescue team rappelled into the damaged checkpoint from wooded mountain slopes, the state broadcaster China Central Television reported. “As far as I can see, it’s nothing but debris,” rescue official Zou Mingqi told state media. Satellite images show the area where travelers passed through border control has been flattened to a muddy plain.

Nepal’s disaster-management authority said Friday that 579 people had been killed; the national police later put the figure at 553. On the Chinese side the death toll rose to seven. More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal. The number of unaccounted-for people in the country nearly doubled to 1,924 as more local residents were added to the tally. China’s state media reported 554 missing on its side.

Nepal’s army was deployed to rescue more than 100 people believed trapped inside a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in the worst-hit district. “It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud,” army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet said. The army has pulled 350 people from the tunnel so far, he said. Video from the scene showed a man covered in mud being pushed and pulled out.

Authorities warned of more flooding from a new lake that formed after a glacier collapse triggered the initial floods Wednesday. Nepali police issued a fresh alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibet side had burst. Security personnel were told to stay on high alert. CCTV said the newly formed lake, located more than 10 kilometres from Gyirong Port, sits at an elevation of 2,950 metres. Monitoring data from the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources later showed the lake had shrunk; the water level dropped 10 metres from its Thursday-morning high point, the state broadcaster said.

Some 680 rescuers eventually reached the Gyirong area by foot and rafts. Some were dropped from drones, CCTV footage showed. “Anyone, anyone?” rescuers yelled.

Nepal on Friday reversed an earlier decision and said it would allow foreign teams and experts to help, according to the English-language newspaper The Kathmandu Post. The reversal came under pressure from countries whose citizens are among the missing.

Search-and-rescue efforts have been supported by an outpouring of financial aid from neighbouring countries. “Sri Lanka has its own huge fiscal problems, but it has just sent $1 million immediately to the Nepal government,” said Kanni Wignaraja, the United Nations Development Programme’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

Scientists who studied satellite images said bedrock underneath a glacier high in the Himalayas collapsed, taking part of the glacier with it. The rockfall registered as magnitude 5.2. The rocks and melted water swelled rivers in the valleys below, causing a torrent that swept buildings, bridges and earth downstream in Tibet and Nepal.

Customs officer Karbir Gaire was among survivors in Timure, the closest Nepalese village to the border. He reached his office around 8 a.m. Wednesday and felt the ground shake. “Right after the shake, I noticed a black storm coming towards us,” he recalled from Kathmandu, where he is back with family. “We all immediately started running out, and within a few seconds, we were climbing uphill on the opposite side of our office building. I think those 10 or so seconds saved some of us.” Fifteen of Gaire’s colleagues are missing. “It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don’t call it a flood. It was a tsunami.”

Nepal’s tourism board said among the missing are more than 500 foreigners. About 90 Americans were unaccounted for. Some of the missing may have been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others. Indian spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev, also known as Sadhguru, said in a post on X that 77 people returning from Mount Kailash with groups organised by his Isha Foundation were at the immigration centre in Gyirong when the flooding struck.

Vishnuram Ramaswamy, who works at a private company in the southern Indian city of Puducherry, said he spoke to his mother and two sisters who were on that pilgrimage Wednesday morning. “This was the last we spoke to them,” he said. “They have been unreachable since.”