Rescuers battle floods and debris as Himalayan disaster death toll nears 800

Authorities said the death toll rose to nearly 800 on Sunday, with more than 3,000 ‌people missing on both sides of the Nepal-China border after a torrent of ice, rock, mud and debris swept through mountain valleys and rivers on Wednesday, causing widespread devastation.

The Red Cross has estimated that more than 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the disaster, which China has linked to the effects of climate change.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Nepalese counterpart during a Saturday telephone call that the mudslide was their "most severe cross-border disaster" in recent years and that rescue operations had risen to an unprecedented level of difficulty and complexity, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Nepal's disaster authority said 781 people had died, with 2,502 missing. On the Chinese side, authorities said 16 people were killed in Gyirong County and 546 were missing.

Beijing said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were unaccounted for in Tibet, near a key border crossing with ⁠Nepal.

The scale of the disaster has complicated rescue efforts across the rugged Himalayan terrain.

Local police in Nepal told Reuters that residents and rescue workers had moved to higher ground after the Trishuli River's water levels rose in recent hours following fresh rainfall, raising fears of additional flooding.

Rescue operations have been suspended several times since Friday because of bad weather and concerns that a lake formed across the Nepal-China border by the disaster could trigger fresh flooding after it began overflowing into Nepal's Lhende Khola and Trishuli Rivers.

CCTV reported that the lake threatening downstream areas had been largely drained by Saturday evening. But drones detected a landslide late on Saturday that is 2.8 kilometres (1.7 miles) downstream of the lake, forming a new dam and a fresh pool of water.

In Nepal, rescue efforts have increasingly focused on five hydropower projects inundated by the floods, including the Upper Trishuli complex, where authorities said on Friday they received information that around 350 people could be trapped inside a tunnel. About 10,000 Nepali troops have been deployed alongside specialist teams from China and India.

Nepal's military airlifted heavy machinery to the remote site on Sunday and rescuers reached the entrance of one tunnel, beginning to clear debris blocking access. Authorities said teams carrying oxygen supplies and cameras would enter once access was secured.

"It's very tough because there's a lot of debris and ‌we cannot ⁠blast things to make our way through," said Dharam Raj Uprety, chief of Nepal's national disaster management authority.

Lok Bahadur Chhetri, a spokesperson for Nepal's foreign ministry, said Nepal required international assistance in specialised areas, including tunnel rescue operations, DNA testing, refrigerated storage for bodies and forensic identification of decomposed remains.

Mas murials of decomposing bodies 

Days after desperate relatives moved between hospitals, morgues and relief centres searching for loved ones, authorities in Nepal began mass burials of hundreds of unidentified victims whose bodies had started to decompose.

In Chitwan district, about 200 km (125 miles) from the disaster zone, authorities dug hundreds of graves in a forest at Devghat for bodies swept downstream from the flood-hit Rasuwa region.

"We were left with no other option," said Ganesh Aryal, chief district ⁠officer of Chitwan. "Our concern was the risk to public health posed by the rapid decomposition of the bodies."

Authorities buried 96 unidentified bodies on Saturday and planned to bury more than 100 others on Sunday as recovery teams continued retrieving victims from rivers and debris. DNA samples were collected and burial sites carefully documented in the hope that families may still be able to identify relatives later.

"Of the bodies we have recovered so far, more than half are beyond recognition," police officer Anil Thapa ⁠told Reuters.

"Many have no visible faces. In some cases, only hands or legs remain; in others, only parts of the body are available."

Link to 'long-term effects of climate change' 

The flood was "caused by glacier instability under the long-term effects of global warming", CCTV reported, saying it was a "new and prominent feature of cryosphere disasters" on the Tibetan plateau.

The mudslide from the Nepalese side took six to seven minutes to reach the Gyirong border crossing, CCTV said, citing the ⁠findings of Chinese scientists. Dramatic surveillance footage shared worldwide showed torrents of water and debris engulfing buildings while people tried to flee.

The state-run TV channel reported China has mobilised more than 2,100 rescue workers and allocated at least 220 million yuan ($32.7 million) to support relief efforts and has been airdropping equipment and supplies to frontline rescuers, while its soldiers used life-detection equipment to look for the missing.