Rescue efforts underway in Nepal after floods kill 9, leave many stranded

Rescue efforts continued on Thursday in Nepal to evacuate people stranded in flood-hit areas, after monsoon rains triggered a river flood in Rasuwa district that left nine dead and nearly 20 missing, media reports said.

We are fully deployed in the field. We rescued more than 150 individuals, including 127 foreign nationals, and airlifted them to Kathmandu, Arjun Paudel, chief district officer of Rasuwa, was quoted as saying by the Kathmandu Post newspaper.

Paudel said that electricity and telephone services were disrupted in the area, disrupting rescue and other operations.

"We are currently maintaining limited communication through the Chinese border. Efforts are underway to restore telephone connectivity and resume electricity supply, he said.

Search operations are also ongoing for the 19 people who went missing following the flood on Tuesday morning, Nepal Police said.

Those missing include six Chinese nationals and two police personnel.

The flash flood that hit parts of Rasuwa district, 120 km northeast of Kathmandu, swept away the "Friendship Bridge" that links the country to China.

It also damaged the Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Plant and parts of the Dry Port situated near the Nepal-China border, according to officials.

Of the nine people killed in the flash floods, the bodies of eight were brought to Kathmandu for postmortem at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj, the Himalayan Times newspaper reported.

One of the victims was identified, and the body was handed over to the family, according to the report.

According to National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) Director General Dinesh Bhatta, the flood might be caused by the outburst of a glacial lake situated near the Nepal-China border, as there was no excessive rainfall at that time on both sides of the border.

"However, we are studying the real cause of the disaster with the help of experts. The water level at some point rose to 3.5 metres without sufficient rain, which is unusual," he told a press conference.