This Friday in Nepal, excavators continue searching through the mud for victims of the massive flood from two days ago. The police have raised the death toll to 469, while lowering the number of missing persons to 910. On the Tibetan side of the Himalayas, meanwhile, Chinese authorities suspended rescue operations for hours after detecting an imminent risk of overflow at an altitude of 2,900 meters. It would be a natural dam formed by debris from the first flood, containing two million cubic meters of water, which is already showing signs of leakage.
In Nepal, the police confirm a slight rise in the river level, with muddy water, and therefore call on the population to stay alert and take extreme precautions.
In the event of an abrupt break at the heights of Tibet, the drop of more than a thousand meters compared to the Gyirong crossing in the valley could reproduce the unstoppable wall of water and mud that on Wednesday swept away 20 kilometers of riverbank and sent bodies up to two hundred kilometers downstream. Four of them have already been located in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. In Nepal, the district where the most human remains are emerging, by far, is precisely Chitwan, which borders India.
In Nepal, of the 977 people missing, 517 are foreigners
Beijing, for its part, has suspended the issuance of entry permits to the affected Gyrong county, from where it evacuated 499 residents and 555 tourists yesterday, mostly Chinese, but also Indians. Many of the missing foreigners, 260, are also of Indian origin and were traveling as pilgrims to the Tibetan lake Manasarovar in organized groups, with Indian, American, British, or Canadian passports. China also regrets that nearly a hundred of its nationals are among the missing in Nepal.
On the other hand, there are reasons to doubt the number of missing Nepalese, which officially is even lower than that of foreigners. In Nepal, of the total 977 missing persons, foreigners would be 517, Nepalese residents abroad 127, and security forces members 85. If these figures are true, there would only be 248 missing locals, a very conservative number given the many towns and villages destroyed.
It’s not that these Nepalese expect anything else. Poor among the poor, in one of the most impoverished countries in Asia, they do not have loudspeakers to make themselves heard, nor to be counted. But hundreds crowd hospitals downstream, seeking news about their relatives. Hoping to find them, even if injured.
The fact is that it is proving almost impossible to identify the bodies, often dismembered. The Nepalese press cites the case of a hospital unable to name a single one of the 130 morgue occupants, awaiting DNA samples.
China, for its part, has not changed its figure of 558 missing for more than 24 hours, 260 of whom would be foreign tourists and pilgrims. Although an official portal, tibet.cn, has raised the number of deaths in its Chinese version from 3 to 5. On the other hand, with the massive use of satellites, Beijing has been able to determine that the original landslide occurred on the slope of the Nepalese peak Langtang Lirung, at more than 5,000 meters altitude.
Nepalese authorities claim to have rescued or treated more than 1,545 injured
It would be an area of ice and rock equivalent to 28 football stadiums, which plunged into the river that serves as a boundary there, also flooding the Tibetan side, before rushing through the gorge where the main international crossing between China and Nepal is located. From there it began an even deadlier descent, due to the higher population density.
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On Chinese social networks, some amateur clips circulate that, from their side of the border, in Tibet, would have captured the precise moment of the glacier collapse. Right opposite, but on Nepalese territory, visible by the dust trail and surely audible. Such a brutal impact that it was recorded by seismographs as a presumed 5.2 magnitude earthquake.
According to the latest update from the Nepalese Police, the aforementioned Chitwan district, where 178 bodies have been found, is followed by East Nawalparasi (110), Gorkha (44), Nuwakot (37), Dhading (33), Tanahun (28), West Nawalparasi (27), and only 12 in Rasuwa, the border district that received the first impact and where entire villages have been practically wiped out.
Nepalese authorities claim to have rescued or treated more than 1,545 injured, mostly in Nuwakot (898), Rasuwa (644), and Dhading (3). Another 80 are being treated in the Kathmandu valley.
More than 13,000 security forces personnel, including Nepal Police officers, Army soldiers, and Armed Police Force (APF) members, remain deployed in the affected area and its surroundings.
In this regard, the government of the new Nepalese prime minister, rapper Balendra Shah, has declined the sending of foreign rescue teams, limiting itself to accepting monetary aid through a single channel. A high-risk operation, due to the country’s level of corruption.
Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have reported three deaths and hundreds of missing persons, which together total 502 deaths and more than 1,400 missing reported by both sides, without evidence of a cross-border coordinating team. However, both capitals have declared their willingness to improve mutual alert mechanisms for the future.
Finally, it should be noted that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has lowered from 4 to 3 the number of Spanish citizens it has been unable to contact in the affected area of Nepal.
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