Rescuers race to find thousands missing after Nepal-China glacier collapse

Rescuers in Nepal and China were working urgently on Sunday to locate thousands of missing individuals following a massive glacier collapse that triggered a devastating mudslide across the Himalayas. The death toll had risen to 750 by early Sunday morning, with more than 3,000 people reported missing on both sides of the Nepal-China border after the event on Wednesday.

Over 90,000 people, according to the Red Cross, are believed to have been affected by the disaster, which China attributed to climate change effects. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi informed his Nepalese counterpart during a phone call on Saturday that this was the most severe cross-border disaster they had experienced in recent years, and rescue operations had become extraordinarily challenging.

In Nepal, 734 people had died, 2,498 were still missing, and 7,514 had been rescued. On the Chinese side, 16 people were killed in Gyirong County, and 546 were unaccounted for, with 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries still missing in Tibet. The scale of the disaster had complicated rescue efforts across the treacherous Himalayan terrain.

Local police in Nepal reported that residents and rescue workers moved to higher ground after the Trishuli River's water level increased due to recent rainfall, raising concerns about potential additional flooding. Rescue operations had been suspended multiple times due to bad weather and fears that a lake formed across the Nepal-China border by the disaster could cause further flooding as it began overflowing into Nepal's Lhende Khola and Trishuli Rivers.

The lake was largely drained by Saturday evening, but drones detected a landslide near the lake on Saturday night, creating a new dam and a fresh pool of water. In Nepal, rescue efforts were now focused on hundreds of people possibly trapped inside tunnels at hydropower plants damaged by the floods. Nepal's foreign ministry spokesperson, Lok Bahadur Chhetri, said the country needed international assistance in specialized areas such as tunnel rescue operations, DNA testing, refrigerated storage for bodies, and forensic identification of decomposing remains.

Indian and Chinese experts were already helping open tunnels and support rescue operations, according to Chhetri. As desperate relatives searched for loved ones across hospitals, morgues, and relief centers, authorities in Nepal began mass burials of hundreds of unidentified victims whose bodies had begun to decompose. In Chitwan district, which had not been directly impacted by the disaster, bodies swept downstream from the flood-affected Rasuwa region had been carried by the river system into the Narayani River. Authorities were taking photographs to identify the bodies.