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Tell us: have you been affected by the flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border?

Hundreds are missing and at least 160 people have died after torrential floods ⁠hit the Himalayan border areas of ⁠Nepal and in Tibet in China. An avalanche of ice and rock triggered massive flash floods causing widespread damage to villages and infrastructure. Officials said hundreds of travellers from countries including India, the United States, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia and Malaysia, were reported missing. If you’ve been affected by the flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, we’d like to hear from you. Though we’d like to hear from you, your safety and security are most important. When recording or sharing your content with us, please put your welfare and the welfare of others first. Extreme weather events can be very unpredictable and carry very real risks.

Nepal flash flood live updates: search on for hundreds missing near Tibet border as officials warn death toll could rise higher

The number of ⁠people ⁠missing in the mudslide disaster ⁠in Tibet’s Gyirong ⁠county has ‌increased ‌to 558, Chinese ‌state broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday. Among those, ‌260 were foreign nationals, CCTV said. ⁠The death toll remained at three, it said. Separately, Nepal said 468 tourists and travellers – including 393 foreigners – remained out of contact on Thursday, 24 hours after the deadly flood tore through the border region with Tibet. It was not immediately clear if the numbers of missing were entirely separate or any had been counted twice. A Nepal tourism department spokesperson, Suraj Ghimire, told Agence France-Presse: “About 468 tourists and travellers are out of contact, among them 75 are Nepalis.”

Ukraine war briefing: Reboot of ‘fortress belt’ defences as Zelenskyy visits frontline

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed two of Ukraine’s most prominent commanders to oversee and strengthen defences of the “fortress belt” of industrialised cities in the Donetsk region. Visiting the frontline, Zelenskyy said Third Army Corps leader Andrii Biletskyi and Denys Prokopenko, commander of the First Corps ⁠Azov, would head new groupings. Both units are known for embracing Nato-style doctrine and new technology. Russian forces are putting pressure on the cities of Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – all critical strongholds for Ukraine. According to open-source mapping group Deep State, Moscow’s ‌troops have been infiltrating deeper into Kostiantynivka, with the Ukrainians weeding them out from houses, basements and ruins. Russia was also stepping up its air and artillery attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk to prepare for a targeted offensive on those cities, Deep State said. Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Bielieskov told Reuters the appointments were “the right move” in giving Ukraine’s new commander in chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi, greater scope for strategic planning. His predecessor, the “Soviet-era” general Oleksandr Syrskyi, was criticised for micromanagement. Ukrainian drone forces commander Robert Brovdi, a leader of Kyiv’s mid and long-range strike campaigns, praised the appointments as an important step towards “network-centric warfare … This is exactly what ‘Smart War’ is,” he posted. Ukraine hit ⁠16 sites in Russia ⁠over ⁠the past day including oil facilities and ⁠logistics, Zelenskyy said ⁠on Wednesday. The ‌targets also included ‌airfields, a missile unit, a military enterprise and infrastructure that ‌Moscow uses to launch attacks against Ukraine. Ukraine’s military general staff said its forces struck a Lukoil refinery overnight in Kstovo, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, setting it on fire. The refinery can process 125m barrels annually. Long-range Ukrainian drones burned a Wildberries warehouse to the ground in the Tambov region south-east of Moscow, Russian authorities said on Wednesday. A ⁠Russian guided aerial ⁠bomb ⁠attack seriously damaged a combined ⁠heat and power plant ⁠in Ukraine’s southern ‌city ‌of Kherson, ‌the plant’s owner, Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz, said ‌on Wednesday. The extent of the damage would be ⁠assessed as soon as the security situation allowed, Naftogaz ‌said. There were explosions in ⁠the ⁠Ukrainian capital of ‌Kyiv ‌early ‌on Thursday, ‌a Reuters ⁠witness said. Around the same time, Russia ⁠attacked an industrial facility ⁠in ⁠the central Ukrainian city of ⁠Kryvyi Rih with ballistic missiles, ⁠injuring two people, ‌said Oleksandr ‌Vilkul, the head of ‌the city’s defence council. It came after Bloomberg reported that Russia was considering ⁠stepping up its ballistic missile strikes ⁠on ⁠Kyiv, including targets in the city centre, ⁠and on critical infrastructure elsewhere in ⁠Ukraine after concluding that efforts ‌to negotiate ‌a peace deal ‌had reached a dead end. While Ukraine has repeatedly offered ceasefires and negotiations, the Kremlin has not altered its demands – chief among which is total control of Ukraine’s Donbas region. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has awarded Ukraine’s Order of Freedom to Elon Musk, whose SpaceX has provided Starlink satellite internet to Ukraine’s military. Musk has restricted its use over Russian territory – a policy Zelenskyy hopes to change so that Ukrainian weapons can use Starlink to navigate to their targets. Ukraine freed 10 Russian prisoners of war, Russia’s human rights commissioner said on Wednesday. On Monday, Russia released 10 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were previously thought to be missing. A pro-Russian hacker group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a cyber-attack on Digdir, the Norwegian government’s digital services agency. The denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks tried to overwhelm the agency’s computers to block services, including one that enables citizens to use one login across multiple public services. A Digdir spokesperson said the agency still managed to keep the services running “practically all the time”. The pro-Russian hacker group Server Killers said it attacked because Norway renewed its security cooperation with Ukraine on 23 August.

Girl, 13, among missing British citizens after flash flood in Nepal

Thirty-three British citizens including a 13-year-old girl are among more than 400 travellers missing after a flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border, according to Nepal’s tourism board. The sudden flood happened on the Tibetan side of the Bhote Koshi River at about 8.30am local time on Wednesday. The 33 UK citizens are among at least 341 foreign nationals unaccounted for. Earlier on Wednesday, the tour operator Alpine Eco Trek said a 13-year-old girl was among the missing British nationals, as well as two Irish citizens. Among the missing British nationals are three men aged 65, 64 and 52, and seven women aged 44, 47, 51, 60, 63, 63 and 65, according to travel logs. The firm, which offers guided tours and expeditions in Nepal, confirmed four of its Nepali tour guides – aged 38, 35, 45 and 29 – are missing as well. Kumar Adhikari, the manager of Alpine Eco Trek, said on Wednesday: “I feel so sad. We are just thinking about what to do next. “We are in pain at the moment, deep pain.” Adhikari said the tour group, who were on a nine-day tour to Mount Kailash, were crossing into Tibet from Nepal when they became trapped at the border as the flash floods struck. He said he was in contact with his tour guides until 8.40am when their phones went offline, at which point the group would have been inside Tibet’s immigration office. “We were hoping that inside it was safe,” he said. “But later the video came from China’s government which (showed) even Tibet’s side was hit by the flood.” The tourist board said more than 100 of the missing people were yet to have a nationality confirmed. Police in Nepal said 157 bodies had been recovered and more than 40 people were injured and receiving treatment in hospital. A wall of mud and rock appeared to have collapsed into the river on the Himalayan border of Nepal and Tibet, triggering catastrophic flooding on the Nepali side, Reuters reported. It said verified videos showed dozens of people being swept away at the border. Houses, roads and energy infrastructure were destroyed in Nepal, while officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties”, with some people missing in the county of Gyirong after ⁠a mudslide hit a border land crossing. Initial reports suggested an earthquake had triggered an avalanche and caused the floods, Shisir Khanal, Nepal’s foreign minister, told the country’s parliament. Eight South Koreans working on a hydropower plant ⁠were missing ⁠and 10 others stranded, South Korea’s foreign ministry ⁠said. Local authorities said tourists in the Rasuwa district of Nepal and other areas along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers should “exercise extreme caution”, remain in safe areas and move to higher ground if required. Visitors were urged to stay in regular contact with hotels and travel agencies. People planning to travel to the affected areas in the coming days were warned to postpone their journeys. The UK’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, said: “I am deeply concerned to hear of the flash floods on the Nepal-China border. All my thoughts are with those affected and with British nationals in the area and their relatives here at home.” The British embassy in Kathmandu urged people in affected areas to follow local advice. A joint statement with the embassies of Australia, the EU, Finland, France, Norway and Switzerland said: “We are deeply saddened by the devastating flooding in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts and surrounding areas. Our thoughts are with all those affected by this disaster. We express our solidarity with the people of Nepal during this difficult time. “We encourage all those in affected areas to follow the guidance of local authorities and official safety advisories as the situation continues to evolve.”

‘Escape wizard’ who has broken out of four prisons is arrested in Spain

Police in Spain have arrested a dangerous Albanian criminal nicknamed the “escape wizard” who has managed to break out of four jails in Italy and Belgium by sawing through bars, clambering down knotted sheets and even using a human pyramid to breach prison walls. The fugitive, who has not been officially named, was arrested after officers from the Policía Nacional force discovered he was living in the north-eastern Spanish city of Tarragona. He was the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by the Italian authorities. Spanish police identified the man by the initials TT, which correspond to those of Toma Taulant, an Albanian national known in Italian media as the “mago della fuga”, or “escape wizard”. Before escaping from a maximum-security prison in Milan eight months ago, he was serving a prison sentence due to end in 2048 for a series of offences including violent robbery, theft and drug dealing, according to Italian media reports cited by Agence France-Presse. “It sounds like something out of a film, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction,” the Policía Nacional said in a statement that described him as “the master of escapes”. “He escaped from a jail in [the Umbrian city of] Terni in 2009, from a jail in Parma in 2013 and from a Belgian prison that same year after using a human pyramid to climb over the wall,” the police said. “His latest escape, in December 2025, came after he managed to break out of a maximum-security prison in Italy after sawing through the bars and climbing out of the window down knotted sheets.” According to the statement, the “very dangerous” fugitive was arrested in Tarragona last Friday, putting up “strong and active resistance” as officers swooped. “The man was accompanied by a number of his compatriots who tried to stop him being arrested, including one man who struck and injured two officers,” the force said. Police are still looking for the assailant but have recovered a Sig Sauer pistol that was discarded by one of the suspect’s associates. Once in custody, the man was found to be in possession of fake identity documents, which revealed that he had a criminal record in the Catalan city of Girona for possession of weapons and explosives. He was also found to be carrying two €500 banknotes that are thought to have been counterfeited, which have been sent to the Bank of Spain for investigation. The suspect was denied bail and has been remanded in custody at a jail in Tarragona while he awaits extradition to Italy.

Only sanctions imposed on Israel will work | Letter

How long does it take for the penny to drop in Downing Street and the Foreign Office (Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinians, 20 August)? Israeli individuals have had sanctions imposed on them for over a year with absolutely no effect, and it is likely that people such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, see them as some sort of badge of honour. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband must realise by now that the only sanctions likely to have any effect are those imposed against the state of Israel, so denouncing the issue of tenders for the E1 settlement near Jerusalem as an “unacceptable and destructive act ” is just box-ticking. It’s all very well for Miliband to say that all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are a “flagrant breach of international law”, but their construction has been going on for years; had the UK and others had the courage to take action when the first ones were built, who knows how many lives could have been saved? Now, with the UN international commission of inquiry reporting that there is ongoing genocide in Gaza, war crimes and ethnic cleansing being carried out in the West Bank, and the callous murder of journalists and “ecocide” in southern Lebanon, criticising recent events as illegal and inhumane, while taking no effective action, is frankly pathetic. Bernie Evans Liverpool • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

South African police arrest two Thai men for allegedly smuggling parrot eggs

South African police have arrested two Thai nationals in separate incidents for allegedly attempting to smuggle endangered parrot eggs out of the country as authorities try to stem the tide of wildlife trafficking. A 50-year-old Thai national was arrested at OR Tambo international airport in Johannesburg on 20 August, carrying 50 bird eggs in a homemade incubator in a hand-luggage bag, South Africa’s environment ministry said in a statement. The ministry said preliminary investigations indicated that the eggs were from parrot species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), which regulates international trade in wild animals and plants to ensure species do not become extinct. It did not specify which species. Another Thai national, a 23-year-old, was arrested at the same airport on 16 July, allegedly trying to smuggle 418 parrot eggs in two homemade incubator bags. Thailand’s embassy in South Africa did not immediately respond to a request for comment. South Africa is battling wildlife smuggling on several fronts, from poached rhino horns and the bones of illegally farmed tigers to abalone shellfish and succulent plants. The environment ministry said: “The illegal collection and trafficking of parrot eggs pose a serious threat to wild bird populations and animal welfare. Eggs are often concealed in improvised incubation devices and transported under conditions that significantly compromise their viability and endanger the welfare of developing embryos and hatchlings.” Staff at the National Zoological Garden in Pretoria are incubating the seized eggs, the ministry said. “Several of the rescued eggs have successfully hatched and the chicks are receiving intensive veterinary and husbandry care to maximise their chances of survival,” the statement added. The ministry said the arrests were carried out after a “joint intelligence-driven operation” led by its Environmental Management Inspectorate, known as the “Green Scorpions”, and police intelligence, border and endangered species units. South Africa punishes the illegal export of Cites-listed species with a fine of 10m rand (£460,000), up to 10 years in prison or both.