The death toll from Wednesday's flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border rose sharply, from an initial count of roughly 19 in the hours after the disaster to 157, according to a new update from Nepal's police cited by BBC News Brasil. Another 579 people remain missing in Nepal. On the Tibetan side, controlled by China, local authorities reported 3 deaths and 265 people missing, according to G1. The figures are still being revised as rescue teams push into hard to reach areas of the Himalayas.
The disaster began when a large mass of ice and rock, which Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology says may have broken off a glacier on the Tibetan side, blocked the Lhende River. The debris dam burst hours later, sending a wall of mud and water down the Trishuli River valley on the border, destroying homes, bridges, roads and power infrastructure. The flood hit Nuwakot district and the town of Rasuwa, as well as Syabrubesi, the starting point of the popular Langtang trekking route.
Cause still under investigation
Early reports suggested an earthquake triggered the ice avalanche. The US Geological Survey (USGS) initially logged a magnitude 4.4 tremor in the area, then retracted that reading hours later, saying "the seismic energy was actually generated by the landslide itself," not the other way around. Imperial College hydrology researcher Martha Day told the BBC that in steep, glacier covered terrain like the Himalayas, hazardous events often cascade, with one raising the odds of another. Scientists are still trying to reconstruct the exact sequence using satellite imagery, though monsoon cloud cover has complicated the analysis.
The disaster has renewed attention on the accelerated melting of glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, a process scientists link to climate change, though it is too early to say how much it weighed in this specific event, according to BBC World Service environment correspondent Navin Singh Khadka. Chinese authorities describe the region as Asia's "water tower," the source of rivers including the Brahmaputra, the Indus and the Ganges, on which hundreds of millions of people downstream depend.
Emergency response mobilizes thousands
Nepal Prime Minister Balen Shah's office said 1,697 troops had been deployed to search efforts, with another 656 on standby. Six military helicopters rescued 94 people over the day, five civilian aircraft rescued another 12, and ground teams saved 27 more, according to the official statement. Sniffer dogs and four drones were also sent to the hardest hit areas. Police said 28 officers remain missing in Rasuwa district alone. The government has urged residents to stay away from riverbanks and risk areas while the search, expected to continue overnight, goes on.
On the Chinese side, President Xi Jinping ordered reinforced rescue operations in Gyirong, the main land crossing between Tibet and Nepal. India sent ten tonnes of humanitarian aid to its neighbor; in a social media post, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said "India stands with Nepal and its people." Nepal's Tourism Board counts 384 missing travelers, 341 of them foreigners, caught while trekking in the region. In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed solidarity with victims' families and the governments of Nepal and China; Brazil's foreign ministry says there are no reports of Brazilian nationals among those affected so far.