Online Desk: Rescue teams waded through mud on Thursday searching for more than 1,400 people missing after flash floods and landslides struck Nepal on Wednesday, as the death toll rose sharply to at least 360, with entire villages swept away, according to Agence France-Presse.
International aid agencies and different countries, including Bangladesh, said they would send assistance to the Himalayan nation following the disaster. The Bangladesh government has taken an initiative to send relief supplies to Nepal as humanitarian assistance for people affected by the devastating landslides and flash floods, reports Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.
The relief supplies include tents, mosquito nets, packets of dry food, flashlights, shovels, sleeping bags, water containers and body bags, said an official handout on Thursday. The Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday expressed deep sorrow and solidarity with the people of Nepal over the heavy loss of life and destruction caused by the calamity, adopting a condolence motion.
The condolence was expressed as the third session of the 13th Jatiya Sangsad began, chaired by speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad.
The AFP reports: Experts warned of the risk of further flooding a day after the devastating tsunami-like wall of freezing water and mud swept through towns under a torrent of sludge, engulfing homes, smashing bridges and dams, and sweeping vehicles away like toys. Many of the missing are foreign tourists. According to the US Geological Survey, the disaster was caused by a glacial collapse that triggered a vast flow of icy debris.
Emergency teams were racing to pluck survivors from affected zones, while Nepali soldiers used sniffer dogs to search for bodies buried under the suffocating dirt.
‘Everything is finished,’ Omkar Joshi, a 35-year-old Nepali customs agent rescued from a hilltop in the border town of Timure, said. ‘It is a giant graveyard. All that is left are sand and pebbles, soaked red by human blood.’ Nepali police said they had recovered 359 bodies.
Another 910 people, including 517 foreign tourists, were out of contact in the country. Beijing said 100 Chinese citizens are missing in Nepal. In China, state media said the ‘mudslide disaster’ at the Gyirong Port in Tibet killed three people, while 558 people, including 260 foreigners, are missing.
Chinese premier Li Qiang visited the area on Thursday, state media said, to oversee ’emergency rescue and relief work, and to visit rescue workers and affected people’.
Nepalese prime minister Balendra Shah, who urged the Himalayan nation to ‘stand together’ hours after the disaster, visited some of the hardest-hit areas on Thursday.
Shah told local authorities to ‘provide immediate relief to displaced families’ and to open blocked roads, his office said in a statement.
Nepal’s tourism board said nearly 127 Nepalis, 100 Chinese, 178 Indians, 65 US citizens, 55 Ukrainians, 50 Malaysians, 34 Australians, 33 people from the United Kingdom, 25 Canadians, nine South Koreans, nine Singaporeans, eight Germans, eight Russians, six South Africans, six Latvians, five Japanese, four French citizens and four Spaniards were among the missing tourists.
Other missing tourists were from Belgium, Hungary, Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Finland, Israel, Lithuania, the Philippines, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and Bulgaria.
Rasuwa, in the north of Nepal, was the first district to be affected, but deaths were reported as far south as Chitwan, on the border with India.
Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, said he would ‘pray for all those who have lost their lives’.
Chinese government officials in Tibet mobilised nearly 800 emergency workers, as well as sniffer dogs and speed boats to help the rescue efforts, the official Xinhua news agency said. Promises of aid and assistance came in soon after reports of the scale of the disaster.
Katmandu’s Flood Forecasting Division issued a ‘special notice’ on Thursday, warning of a growing lake behind debris left by the landslide.
‘Residents of downstream areas of the Bhote Koshi River, travellers, rescue personnel, and all concerned are requested to exercise extreme caution,’ it said.