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Nepal-Tibet floods: Nepal calls for technical support for rescue efforts as number of missing rises to nearly 3,000 – as it happened

We’re wrapping up the Nepal-Tibet flash flood for the time being. Here are the latest developments: Nearly 3,000 people are missing. Nepal’s disaster agency on Saturday said 2,426 people were missing on its side of the border, while China’s Xinhua news agency reports the total number of missing in Tibet is now 554. This includes at least 777 foreigners and 933 workers on hydropower projects on the river where the torrent smashed down. The death toll in Nepal has now risen to 675, the country’s disaster authority has said. China’s Xinhua news agency earlier today reported seven people confirmed dead in Tibet– where information is under the strict control of Chinese authorities – that brings the death toll for the disaster to 682. More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far but at least 93,000 people are estimated to have been affected by the disaster, according to the Red Cross. Nepal rescuers send air pipe into tunnel with trapped workers. Nepali army rescuers sent air pipes into tunnels, in the hopes of reaching missing hydropower workers, AFP reported. Rescue efforts are focused on the Trishuli 3A and 3B sites. Nepal’s government has appealed for foreign support to aid rescue efforts. This includes financial aid and freezers to preserve bodies. Nepal’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, says reconstruction efforts could run into “billions of dollars”, AFP reports. He added: “We will do loss and damage research and then we plan, but I am reaching out to our international community for support.”

Palestinian woman and NBC News team reportedly attacked in West Bank

A Palestinian woman and an NBC News team are reported to have been attacked and injured by masked Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday, amid worsening confrontations in the area. Benjamin Netanyahu said he condemned the violence committed “by a handful of rioters”. The attack occurred when four members of the news team were interviewing Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family in the Palestinian town of Jalud, near Nablus. Abdullah told the outlet that they had been driven out of their home by settlers, and the team was walking down a hill toward the house. A car with Israeli license plates reversed up the hill toward them. At least four men with their faces covered leapt from the vehicle, hitting them with sticks and throwing rocks. “They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” said NBC News correspondent Matt Bradley. Bradley was hit twice in the arm and treated at a nearby clinic. Abdullah, 51, was taken for medical care by the Red Crescent. Her injuries were not life-threatening. Three other members of the news team were also injured and treated. “Suddenly a car came to us,” said producer Lawahez Jabari. “The settlers had sticks, I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.” Camera operator Khaldoon Eid said the team had not expected to be attacked in a village. Several violent incidents in the area were reported on Saturday. Palestinian workers were pepper-sprayed in nearby Qusra by masked Israeli settlers. Israeli security forces told the outlet they had received reports that “violent clashes had occurred, including stone-hurling toward Palestinians and additional civilians”. They said “security forces identified dozens of rioters who had barricaded themselves inside a Palestinian home while Palestinian residents were inside”, the statement said. “The security forces who arrived at the scene initially operated to remove the rioters from the home and separate the groups, in order to protect the residents inside. In addition, the security forces confiscated vehicles belonging to the Israeli rioters that were suspected of having been used to reach the area,” the statement said. “IDF soldiers and Israel Border Police forces continue to operate in the areas of Qusra and Jalud to prevent further disturbances and restore order in the area,” it added. Earlier this month, a group of settlers began blocking supplies from entering Palestinian houses on the outskirts of the village near Nablus, trapping residents inside and drawing strong criticism from the US ambassador. Israeli forces continue to operate in the area while settlers still roam the surrounding hills. Netanyahu, whose government has been accused of turning a blind eye to the settler attacks, condemned the “criminal acts of violence” and blamed “a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF in fulfilling its missions and harm Israel’s standing in the world”. According to the United Nations’ office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, Israeli forces or settlers killed 76 Palestinians in the West Bank in the year to 24 July. Three Israelis were killed over the same period.

Sydney man Nava flew to Nepal thinking his wife had been found. Crushingly, ‘the search goes on’

Nava Pandey had hoped the search for his wife was over. Nepal’s disaster management agency had been releasing names of people it had found in stages. One of them was almost identical to his wife, Sumi Adhikari, who, along with 40 other Australians, went missing in the catastrophic Nepal-Tibet flood disaster on Wednesday. “The last name matched,” Pandey says. “But they hadn’t disclosed the address of the person or the nationality. And it was very hard to figure out where exactly this person was. So we have called a few people, and someone drove there.” On Friday night, a family friend drove more than two hours out of Kathmandu, where Pandey was waiting with family for news, to the Nuwakot district, where the main emergency holding and rescue centre is located, near the flood zone. Adhikari, 41, is one of about 130 pilgrims who were near the Gyirong border crossing between Nepal and China when the floods struck. The area was one of the hardest hit – CCTV footage showed a huge wall of water and debris smashing through buildings as people tried to flee on foot. It was about 7am on Wednesday morning in Nepal when Pandey, who was at their home in Sydney, spoke to his wife, who had finished a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash with the Isha Foundation the day before. The pair have two children, who she was longing to see. “She was probably one and a half hours away from [the Gyirong border crossing],” he says. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email “She was really happy. She had done what she had gone to do; she really wanted to do this. But she was excited to come back.” Adhikari was finishing the trek with a sore throat and slight fever, but that did not affect her good mood, Pandey says. She told him she wanted to come back in 10 years and do it again. At 9am, the last location tracker data on her iPhone was recorded near the border about 10 minutes after impact. She was standing with the Isha Foundation group in the immigration centre when the flood hit. The building was completely washed away. On Thursday, Pandey got on a flight from Sydney to Nepal to be closer to the search. Late on Friday night, the family friend called – it was not Adhikari on the list of survivors. “It was a different person, a local,” Pandey says. “The search goes on.” The rescue effort up the river has been hampered by the remoteness of the location and the destruction wreaked by the flood. Roads have disappeared and bridges have been completely washed away. Satellite images show the area has been flattened to mud. Getting to the Gyirong border crossing has been impossible by car, with rescuers only able to helicopter in. On Friday, rescue teams from China and Nepal had to stop after a barrier lake began to overflow. On Saturday, the Nepali army was expected to enter the area and begin a ground search. Chinese rescuers who had rappelled down the wooded mountain slopes to get into the area reported that it had been obliterated. “As far as the eye could ⁠see, there was nothing but ruins,” rescue worker Zou Mingqi said. Pandey was hopeful ground crews could begin searching the area by Saturday afternoon, but said families have not received enough information – especially from the Chinese side. He says the Chinese government may have information that would help locate some of the missing Australians. “We respectfully call upon the Chinese government and local authorities to release all available verified information, provide regular updates about the search efforts and establish direct communication with the affected families,” he says. “Families should not be left without answers during such a critical time.” Newcastle woman Reshma Patel, 46, was also in the Isha Foundation group. She didn’t know Adhikari beforehand, but the pair had become friends on the pilgrimage, Patel’s family friend Chin Valsan says. “They were talking to each other, and they were supposed to come back on the same flight on Thursday,” he says. He describes Patel, who has two children aged 10 and 14, and works casually for Canterbury-Bankstown council, as “full of life” and a “kind soul” who loves her family and friends. As of Saturday, nearly 3,000 people are missing, including at least 777 foreigners. Nepal’s disaster agency on Saturday said 2,426 people were missing on its side of the border, while China’s Xinhua news agency reported the total number of missing in Tibet is now 554. Many of the missing foreigners in the area are believed to be pilgrims like Patel and Adhikari, who were there to walk around Mount Kailash – one of the two mountains in the Himalayas that cannot be climbed because of its spiritual significance. The peak is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and those belonging to the pre-Buddhist Bon religion, and attracts thousands of tourists each year. Hindus believe that Mount Kailash is the spiritual home of Shiva, the god of destruction and transformation. Going on this pilgrimage was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Patel, Valsan says. “She was getting spiritual,” he says. “She wanted to do this trip solo, and said she was attracted to the place.” Like Pandey, Valsan says the families need more information – he wants the Australian government to make sure rescuers have a database of Australians’ details. While they wait, they’re torn between hope and despair. In Kathmandu, Pandey spends his waking hours hoping he will be able to bring his wife home with him. “I’m just keeping my fingers crossed … hopefully, you know, we get some positive news.”

Daughter traces mother and aunt’s last known location in Nepal through TikTok video

The daughter of a woman missing in Nepal has told how she traced her mother’s location through a TikTok video posted hours before the devastating flash flood hit. The catastrophic flash floods that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, thundering down valleys and sweeping away entire villages, have killed at least 675 people, while more than 3,000 remain missing. Among the missing are 33 British nationals, including a 13-year-old, NHS workers and a priest. A team from the UK will arrive in the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, on Saturday. Tulshi Patel’s mother, Hemangini Jitendra Patel, and her aunt, Hema Sunil Amin, set off on a pilgrimage in which they had planned to travel into Tibet, but the pair have not been contactable since the flash floods hit. In an interview with LBC’s Matt Frei, Patel said the two women had been talking about the trip since the start of the year and the journey had been “on their bucket list”. She said she had last spoken to her mother and aunt on Monday, had received a photo of them on Tuesday, and their last known location had come from a GPS signal from the tour group at a place called Friendship Bridge at the Nepal-China border. Patel, a pharmacist from Milton Keynes, said: “We did our own deep-dive research and we found a TikTok video that verified and showed my mum and auntie and three other people from the tour at the border waiting to cross, I guess, that the local Nepali tour guide had made.” Of the video, Patel said: “It was Wednesday morning, just before 6am, Nepal time. “They were supposed to have crossed the border on Tuesday, but I guess due to weather conditions, or whichever it was, they got delayed and unfortunately crossed over on Wednesday.” The flood is believed to have occurred after a magnitude 5.2 seismic event near the border between Nepal and China on Wednesday at 8.37am local time, according to the US Geological Survey. Patel said her mother and aunt had been in good health and had prepared well for the trip. “They’d gone on walks regularly, they were looking forward to it. This is all they wanted,” she said. “Their positive viewpoints, health, mental health was great and they were very strong and positive about everything. “This was something that they were both looking forward to. They’d been talking about this from the beginning of the year. It was something that was on their bucket list that they really wanted to do.” Patel said she had messaged the two women “in the hopes that maybe we’ll see a tick to say they’ve seen it or read it” and had attempted to contact the tour guide. “We’ve messaged the tour guide in case he has a signal because he’ll have a local Sim as well. “Every day we’re calling via WhatsApp … We’ve not given up, but, from our end, all we can do is research, but we just need kind of eyes and ears there from our side to basically get them out. Get all of them out and safe.” Patel said the family had considered travelling to Nepal to join search efforts but had decided against this as they did not know how close they could get to the region in order to help. Some of those missing were visiting Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in ‌Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists. Neetu Goyal Tiwari, 51, was on her “dream” trip to complete a pilgrimage when the flash floods hit. The family have been desperately phoning contacts in Nepal in an attempt to find her, though they increasingly believe her to still be in China. As many of the family members are based in India, it is difficult for them to obtain visas to search for her. Her brother, Naresh Goyal, said Neetu’s husband and daughter remained in the UK for now. “We’re not sure what the next second holds and what we should do from our end, because we’re trying to reach everyone we can,” he said. “She was a very fun-loving woman [and] really had a great heart. I really hope she comes back soon.” Other families of those missing have travelled to the affected region from the UK. Leena Bector, 53, from Slough, was among 27 travellers who are unaccounted for. Her husband, Bhupesh Bector, told the Times he was booking the next flight to Kathmandu after the Home Office had failed to confirm whether Leena was on its missing persons list. He said: “Even if they find her today or tomorrow, I need to be there. She must be in trauma.”

Number of missing in Nepal and Tibet rises to nearly 3,000 as operations continue

The number of people killed in the floods in Nepal has risen to at least 675, the country’s disaster authority has said. Seven have also been confirmed dead in Tibet by Chinese state media, taking the total killed when a glacial collapse unleashed a deadly torrent through river systems in the Himalayan mountains to 682. Seven bodies have also been recovered in India from rivers flowing from Nepal and are believed to be flood victims. The number of people missing in Nepal and Tibet was revised up to nearly 3,000 on Saturday. The missing list includes 517 foreigners and 933 workers on hydropower projects on the river where the torrent smashed down, Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said. A number of rescue workers are also missing, including 45 Nepali army soldiers and 40 police officers. When a Chinese rescue team reached the all-but-obliterated Gyirong border crossing complex for the first time on Friday, they found “nothing but ruins”. Surveillance camera footage from the complex showed huge torrents of water and debris on Wednesday engulfing buildings and people trying to flee. Only ⁠on Friday were rescuers able to reach the area. Amid the deepening crisis, Nepal has now said it needs foreign ⁠help in specialised and technical areas, but not in search and rescue. On ⁠Friday, Nepal’s foreign ministry had said that Kathmandu could manage the rescue efforts on its own for now and declined foreign involvement. The areas in which Nepal is seeking help include opening transport and communication services in places where bridges have been destroyed, identification of dead bodies, DNA testing, rescuing people stuck in tunnels, and storing bodies for longer durations, the foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, said late on Friday. Khanal said there was no need for assistance in general search and rescue which was being done by Nepali rescuers. “We think there is no need for repetition in this,” he said. Nepal has requested that its neighbours, India and China, provide bailey bridges to reopen transport and communication in an area where about two dozen bridges have been destroyed. So far, India has sent three flights carrying about 60 tons of relief material to Nepal, including blankets, medicines, food and water purification tablets, ⁠and a specialised tunnel rescue team. China has also dispatched five tunnel experts from Tibet to Nepal for flood-related rescue work, Chinese state media reported, as the country called for emergency aid to be sent to disaster-hit areas and for international rescue cooperation. Rescuers – including army personnel and police – have been clawing through mud and using drilling equipment to reach more than 100 people trapped inside a hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa. More than 350 people have already been evacuated from the site under “extremely risky” conditions and the office of Nepal’s prime minister said the rescue effort had become “extremely challenging” due to adverse weather. Search and rescue operations were temporarily halted because of rain and fog but resumed on Saturday afternoon after the weather improved. Kawan Koirala, a rescue worker from the Nepal Scout Disaster Response Team, said they had been struggling in thick, leg-sucking mud. “People want their family member’s body back, either dead or alive, but we cannot find them … you can see the mud,” he told Agence France-Presse, exhausted after an 18-hour shift. Nepal is continuing to monitor two barrier lakes upstream of the flood zone, with an official warning that flood risks will persist until both lakes fully drain. Satellite imagery showed the second lake growing larger with no visible outlet, raising concerns that water pressure could still be building. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said that the first barrier lake was reducing in size, citing analysis by the water resources ministry. A Chinese government geohazards expert warned, however, that the lake may be ‌unstable and that more than 100 glacial lakes scattered throughout the area could pose a threat. In Beijing, a politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping called for stronger monitoring of glacier lakes and landslide risks, and for closer international disaster cooperation, Xinhua reported. China’s Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No 2 official, arrived in the area of Gyirong on Thursday afternoon, Xinhua said. The visit suggested Beijing was treating the disaster as a matter of the highest national priority. In China, strict controls on the flow of information from one of its most sensitive regions are hampering the public’s understanding of events. The BBC and New York Times have reported that videos of the catastrophic floods, widely shared globally, have not appeared on Chinese social media sites. Tibet, brought under Chinese control in the 1950s, is the most sensitive and tightly controlled region in the country. The Gyirong border port plays a key role in China’s belt and road network linking the country to south Asia, with logistics zones and vehicle parks built there in the past decade. Nepal’s finance minister, Swarnim Waglé, estimated the country will ⁠need $4-$5bn (£3-£3.7bn) for rebuilding. “This is just an estimate. Loss and ⁠damage is being assessed,” he said. More than 90,000 people have been affected by the disaster, the Red Cross estimated. Some of the bodies being recovered had decomposed beyond recognition and will need to be identified using DNA samples, Nepali officials have said.

‘The world needs to pay attention’: Nepalis and Tibetans in New York respond to the Himalayan disaster

Geeta Tamang was getting ready for bed when her aunts shared news that upended her world. “My aunts came into my room and told me what had happened,” said Tamang, a 24-year-old computer science student at Queens College. She lives in Jackson Heights, home to one of the largest Nepali and Tibetan communities in New York City. Tamang’s family village lies in Rasuwa near the Nepal-Tibet border, where a Himalayan glacier collapsed on Wednesday. The torrent of water, mud and rock tore through communities downstream, sweeping away most of the village where Tamang grew up. As her calls to relatives went unanswered, the uncertainty only fueled her fears. Those she did reach were largely unaware of the disaster that had unfolded. From her bedroom in Queens, Tamang found herself breaking the news to her own family, one call at a time. Across New York’s Nepali and Tibetan diaspora, the flood has stirred grief and fear for relatives back home, and desperation to help in any way possible. More than 600 people have been confirmed dead, and almost 3,000 remain missing, including Tamang’s grandmother’s sister. “My grandmother’s sister, she’s really like a grandmother to me,” Tamang said, her voice trembling. “I don’t think there’s any chance she survived.” Across the border in Tibet, Chinese authorities have reported at least seven deaths. But the official toll has been met with deep suspicion among some Tibetans living abroad, including Sonam Tshiring, 58, a Tibetan refugee who settled in Queens three decades ago who believes the number of people killed in Tibet is far higher than Chinese authorities have acknowledged. For Nepali and Tibetan communities thousands of miles away in New York and across the US, the catastrophe is about more than relatives missing and villages destroyed. It has sharpened the focus on an urgent injustice: who is being forced to bear the consequences of a warming planet, and why should communities that contributed so little to the climate crisis bear some of its greatest costs? Nepal is responsible for only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet its Himalayan communities face mounting dangers as temperatures rise and glaciers retreat. The disaster has also arrived at a particularly fraught political moment, as the US has retreated from international climate commitments while dramatically reducing foreign aid and humanitarian assistance, leaving vulnerable countries with fewer resources to prepare for and recover from disasters. The anxiety has reached a younger generation of Nepali Americans, some of whom have spent much of their lives moving between Nepal and New York. Ninima Rai, 19, lived in Nepal before moving to New York when she was 11. She was still a child when a devastating earthquake struck Nepal in 2015. This time, she watched a catastrophe in her homeland from thousands of miles away. Her relatives in Nepal were safe, she said, though communications had been disrupted. From New York, she and other young Nepalis have been following updates, sharing information and supporting organizations that are assisting flood victims. “It’s hard to see how we can support them from so far away,” Rai said. Tashi Sherpa, 16, was born in the United States but spent four formative years of her childhood in Nepal after her parents worried she might lose touch with their culture. She returned to New York for greater educational opportunities and describes herself as having grown up “between Nepal and New York”. For Sherpa, crises in both countries have produced a peculiar sense of having two homes but, at moments, feeling secure in neither. “As a Nepali American … it’s not just Nepal, but it’s America too,” she said. “I think it is a very chaotic time for us to feel like there is no safe space … and we feel very easily overwhelmed.” Still, both teenagers described action as an antidote to helplessness. Friends in Nepal were preparing aid kits and collecting donations for food and clothing, Sherpa said, while young Nepalis in New York were sharing information and checking on relatives. “There’s only so much that we can do, especially being so far away,” Sherpa said. Tsomo Dasel, 40, is the owner of Himalayan Yak. Tucked on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, it was New York’s first Nepali restaurant and is now a staple in the community. On Friday afternoon, she expressed her growing frustration with the US government’s response to the climate crisis. “The world needs to pay attention,” she said. Back home in Nepal, her husband’s family is safe – but it’s not just her loved ones that she’s worried about. Dasel said the priority in the aftermath should be to exhaust all available resources to find the missing. Each passing moment is crucial to the search, which she fears won’t match the enormity of the disaster. She voiced her distaste with the Trump administration’s humanitarian response, after the state department pledged an initial $500,000 in emergency aid for Nepal – an amount she called an “insult” to address a catastrophe with a death toll that’s in the hundreds, and still rising. “It’s a joke – if you don’t want to do anything, then don’t do it.” Dasel is particularly concerned about a media landscape that often overlooks Tibet. “[Tibet] is a climate issue – what kind of world will we leave behind if our president doesn’t believe in climate change?” she asked. While local non-profits addressing the disaster have advised direct donation, Dasel is ready to help in any way that’s needed. Since she arrived in the US in 2002, she’s been a champion of her community. However, it’s been difficult for her to help delegate support, with power outages slashing lines of communication in Nepal and Tibet. “We don’t know how we can help them … so we’re sitting down together, like, OK, what are the resources? … Maybe their emergency needs … anything that, you know, they may not have, and we can provide them.” When the time comes, she’ll be ready: “Whatever the team needs.”

Russian drone strike on Kyiv warehouse storing weapons kills at least 37

At least 37 people have been killed after a Russian drone struck a warehouse near Kyiv’s western suburbs that was storing “explosive objects”. The attack damaged at least 50 residential buildings, including a care home for elderly and disabled people, and sparked a huge fire and explosions in the Bucha district of the Kyiv region. The regional governor, Tymur Tkachenko, said a further 42 people, including four children, had been injured in the strike. More than 370 people have been evacuated from the area and the evacuation process was continuing, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said. In a statement, he said a warehouse in the town of Myla had been struck, “followed by a detonation”. The warehouse was a depot owned by the Ukrainian military and stored shells, drones and other munitions, he said in a video address. “The first impact was on a place where ammunition was being stored that absolutely should not have been there – a depot of the defence forces. [There was] detonation of shells, mines, other munitions and drones on a significant scale,” Zelenskyy said. Criminal proceedings had been opened on charges of official negligence, he added. “There are regulations in place; ammunition cannot be stored near homes or other residential areas.” He said one of the people killed was the head of the Dmytrivka community, Taras Didych, who died while rescuing others. Ukrainian prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the legality of the “storage of explosive objects and materials”. The Ukrainian prime minister, Serhii Koretskyi, expressed regret that mistakes had not been learned from a previous deadly strike on a munitions depot in Vyshneve, near Kyiv, in July. An investigation into that incident, in which 22 people were killed and fires tore through nearby homes, revealed serious failings on the part of a state-owned company, which did not comply with regulations on the proximity of residential buildings. “Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson,” Koretskyi said. “In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence. And all those guilty, without exception, must be severely punished so that such situations do not happen again.” In a statement, Russia’s ministry of defence said it had hit a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It said it had also attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, as well as a logistics centre and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region. Elsewhere, Russian attacks across Ukraine’s southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 27 more on Saturday, including a child, a local official said.