The number of people missing following a devastating flood and mudslide along the Nepal–Tibet border has approached 3,000, with authorities on both sides reporting a combined 691 bodies recovered as rescue teams struggle to reach isolated communities.
Chinese state media reported on Sunday, August 30, that the confirmed death toll in Tibet had increased from seven to 16. Another 546 people remained unaccounted for after a torrent of water and debris swept through the mountainous border region earlier in the week, destroying entire villages.
Citing local officials, state broadcaster CCTV said 261 of those missing in Tibet were foreign nationals. They included 104 Nepalese, 49 Indians, 33 Latvians and 18 Americans.
“Chinese authorities have notified the respective embassies and consulates of these countries in China,” CCTV said, citing officials.
The broadcaster also reported that no foreign tourists remained stranded in Gyirong County, the Tibetan county affected by the mudslide.
That assessment followed “multiple rounds of comprehensive region-wide surveys, site-specific checks, and individual verifications at the border crossing”, CCTV said.
Chinese officials on Sunday attributed the disaster to a glacier collapse in Nepal that set off an avalanche of ice and rock.
According to Xinhua news agency, experts “concluded that at approximately 10:52am (Beijing Time) on Aug 26, a glacier on the southern slope of Lirung Peak in Nepal” fractured, triggering the avalanche.
Rescue operations have been hampered by the region’s remote terrain and extensive damage to infrastructure. Roads and communications remained cut off at Gyirong Port, deep in the Himalayas along China’s border with Nepal.
Meanwhile, the first shipment of Chinese relief supplies arrived in Kathmandu, accompanied by four tunnel rescue specialists, CCTV reported on Sunday.
The aid included tents, blankets, sleeping bags, food rations, first-aid kits and other essential and medical supplies. The broadcaster said the goods would be sent to affected areas to support emergency treatment and meet survivors’ basic needs.
In Nepal, rescuers made progress late Saturday at the Trishuli 3A hydroelectric project, where workers are believed to be trapped underground. The Nepali army managed to insert a pipe into a tunnel, allowing air to be supplied inside.
“We have already started sending air through the small opening, and we will now begin excavation work and send the rescue team inside,” Home Minister Sudan Gurung said in a statement.
More than 100 workers may still be alive inside tunnels, with search and rescue operations concentrating on the Trishuli 3A and 3B sites.
The large number of people still missing reflects the difficulties of searching a disaster zone buried beneath vast quantities of mud, rock and other debris.
Colin Stark, a landslide expert and professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Civil Engineering, told CNA that establishing the full human toll would take time.
He said many victims were likely buried beneath material deposited by the flood, while others could have been carried kilometres downstream by the water and debris.
“For these reasons, the number of missing is far, far higher than the number of confirmed fatalities,” he said.
Stark expected the confirmed death toll to increase and believed that most of those still missing could ultimately be among the dead. However, he described that assessment as “just a guess”, emphasising the uncertainty surrounding a disaster of this magnitude.
Some deaths may never be confirmed because rescuers may be unable to recover the bodies, he added.
Professor Liu Ko-Fei, also of National Taiwan University, told CNA that disasters of this kind could require months to “clarify the list of (people) injured and the death toll”. He said it was “reasonable to expect the death toll to rise”.
Search operations become particularly difficult in areas covered by “soft mud and a lot of boulders”, Liu said. Teams would prioritise survivors who could be “easily traced”, before moving into locations that were harder to access.
As rescuers pushed further into “difficult areas”, he added, updates on the number of people rescued would become less frequent.
“The scale of the disaster is really large, the affected area is not just the 20 km long region,” said Liu.
“There will be prolonged psychological and economic damage.”
Images captured by satellites, aircraft and drones could help rescuers understand the extent of the destruction and identify where to concentrate their efforts.
Professor Liu Lin, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, told CNA that remote sensing could map the debris flow’s route, estimate its speed and show which areas had been buried.
Such imagery could also provide evidence of where the disaster began and what triggered it, he said.
Comparing those images with records of villages, buildings and roads before the disaster could help identify communities and structures that lay directly in the torrent’s path.
“This is very helpful for estimating casualties and survivability and for guiding rescue teams to the right places quickly,” said Liu.
However, imagery alone cannot establish how many people were present or where they were when the disaster struck. Liu said those details were not “directly countable” through remote sensing and would need to be assessed alongside census information, eyewitness accounts, travel records and video footage.
“Ultimately, only people on the ground can determine who survived.”
