SMART team to head home from Nepal, says foreign minister

Malaysia's disaster assistance and rescue team, also known as SMART, is set to return home to Malaysia either today or tomorrow after their mission in Nepal, according to Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan. The team departed for Nepal last Saturday, carrying 12.4 tonnes of search and rescue equipment. Their mission was expected to last 10 days, but they are now returning home.

Hasan emphasized that Nepali authorities have no plans to end the search and rescue operations, as approximately 5,000 people remain unaccounted for. The team will transfer all the drones they brought to Nepal to the Nepali rescue teams for their use. The floods and landslides that hit Nepal on August 26th resulted in over 1,400 deaths and thousands of missing persons, according to both Nepali and Chinese authorities.

Despite no new developments or traces found of the missing Malaysians, the last known locations of their mobile phones were in areas severely impacted by the disaster. The Malaysian embassy in Kathmandu is in discussions with Nepal's foreign and law ministries to establish the status of the missing Malaysians. This is because, under Nepali law, a death certificate for a missing person can only be issued after three years, compared to seven years in Malaysia.

Hasan expressed the hope of establishing a legal mechanism to facilitate prompt assistance for insurance and other claims. Furthermore, Malaysia is seeking Nepal's cooperation to allow DNA samples from the recovered bodies to be sent to Kuala Lumpur for matching against samples from the families of the missing Malaysians. Nepal is currently facing a shortage of facilities and equipment to conduct DNA matching.