{"id":222176,"date":"2026-08-27T14:19:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/nearly-1400-missing-mostly-tourists-after-nepal-tibet-flash-flood-kills-at-least-270-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T14:19:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:19:20","slug":"nearly-1400-missing-mostly-tourists-after-nepal-tibet-flash-flood-kills-at-least-270-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/nearly-1400-missing-mostly-tourists-after-nepal-tibet-flash-flood-kills-at-least-270-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 1,400 missing, mostly tourists, after Nepal-Tibet flash flood kills at least 270 – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entire villages swept away after glacial collapse triggers flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims
Nepal-Tibet flash flood \u2013 latest updates<\/a>
Have you been affected by the flash floods?<\/a>
Rescuers are searching for nearly 1,400 people, most of them tourists, who are missing after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet<\/a>, thundering down valleys, obliterating entire villages and killing at least 356 people.
Efforts to locate those missing \u2013 including hundreds of people from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada \u2013 have been complicated by the destruction of dozens of bridges and almost 25 miles (40km) of roads in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims.
Videos from Wednesday\u2019s disaster showed a massive wall of water crashing down on the border<\/a> as people tried to flee. Trucks were upended and houses, roads \u2060and power plants swept away in Nepal, while \u200bofficials in Tibet said they feared \u201cmajor casualties\u201d after a mudslide hit a border crossing.
Rescue teams have found bodies hundreds of miles downstream from the disaster zone in the Chitwan district of Nepal<\/a>, near the Tibetan border. Dozens of injured people have been transported to Kathmandu for advanced medical care. By Thursday morning, the Nepali army had rescued more than 100 people from flood-affected areas by helicopter.
David Fisher, the head of the Nepal delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said entire villages and market areas had been wiped out.
In the affected areas, houses, trees and vehicles were submerged or buried in mudslides. Helicopters hovered overhead all day, helping to rescue survivors.
The power, volume and speed of the surging waters gave little time for anyone to flee.
People from the hard-hit areas of Nuwakot and Dhading were seen gathering outside a Nepali army training centre \u2013 the base for helicopter rescue operations \u2013 seeking information about missing family members.
Police were recording the names of the missing just outside the barracks gate. Mobile phone torches were their only source of light as the area remained without electricity due to damaged hydroelectric infrastructure.
The village of Soley, in Nuwakot, which had about 25 homes, was virtually wiped out, according to Nirajan Paudyal, a Kathmandu-based journalist whose parents and other relatives live there. Desperate for information, he travelled to the area on Thursday for news of his family.
\u201cThere is no update till now,\u201d he said. \u201cI fear there won\u2019t be any update.\u201d
Almost 600 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism \u2060officials said. Among those unaccounted were 177 from India, 63 from the US, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada.
Chinese state media said at least 558 were missing on the Tibet side of the border, of whom at least 260 were foreign nationals.
Police in Nepal said 353 \u2060bodies had been recovered by Thursday afternoon local time, while Chinese state media reported three dead on the Tibet side of the border.
Many of the victims were on a pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in \u200cTibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists among others.
Early reports from Nepali \u200bofficials suggested an earthquake could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger \u200cthe floods. But the US Geological Survey later said what was initially reported \u200cas a 4.4-magnitude earthquake was a seismic shock generated by glacial rock and ice collapsing and the flow of debris. \u201cNo earthquake had occurred,\u201d it said.
An initial study of Planet Labs satellite imagery indicated a landslide of ice and rock triggered the debris-laden flood in the Lhende River, about 12 miles (20km) north-east of the Nepal-China Rasuwagadhi border crossing, Nepal\u2019s national disaster authority said. Experts say the risk of such events is compounded by the extreme topography of the Himalayas.
People shared harrowing stories of how they managed to survive. \u201cI started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake,\u201d said Bibek Kumal, a labourer who was working downstream from the worst-hit Rasuwa district, near Nepal\u2019s Himalayan border with China\u2019s Tibet.
From his hospital bed, Kumal said the torrent swept him downstream amid mud and debris but he survived by clinging to a mango tree. \u201cHad there been no mango tree, I would \u200chave been washed away to death,\u201d he said.
Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor who was being treated at a small hospital, said: \u201cIt was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us. As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher.
\u201cI tried to grab my wife\u2019s hand and take \u2060her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud. Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She\u2019s gone.\u201d
The United Nations secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, said UN teams and partners were mobilising supplies and personnel to support communities affected by the disaster. The US government said it would provide $500,000 in emergency assistance.
Tibet government officials deployed nearly 800 emergency workers and 150 vehicles as well as sniffer dogs and speedboats to help the rescue efforts, China\u2019s official Xinhua news agency said.
The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, travelled to the affected area on the China-Nepal border on Thursday to oversee search efforts there.
The tour company Himalayan Glacier said 47 people, including two children, were missing from one of its groups in Nepal. Among them were 15 Australians, 10 Canadians, nine Nepalis, eight Americans, two Britons, two Singaporeans and one Russian-American dual citizen, its managing director, Sanket Pandey, said.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said his thoughts were with those concerned about their loved ones, and that getting information about the status of missing people remained difficult.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report<\/em><\/p>\n

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Entire villages swept away after glacial collapse triggers flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrimsNepal-Tibet flash flood \u2013 latest updatesHave you been affected by the flash floods?Rescuers are searching for nearly 1,400 people, most of them tourists, who are missing after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, thundering down valleys, obliterating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}