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.
Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) said on Thursday that the flood was likely triggered by the bursting of a supraglacial lake (a lake formed on top of a glacier), located about 36 kilometres north of the Nepal-China border at Rasuwagadhi at an altitude of around 5,150 metres in the Chinese side.
“Before the incident, the lake covered approximately 0.74 square kilometres. After the flood, its area was found to have decreased to around 0.60 square kilometres,” according to the department.
“This change in size indicates a significant release of water, supporting the conclusion that a lake outburst caused the flood in the Lhende Stream.” There was not sufficient rain on either side of the border before the flash flood, it said.
Flood expert Binod Parajuli from the department stated that further information is expected from China, and upcoming satellite images will help clarify the details of the incident. The department said it will continue its study of the event.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in its preliminary report suggested that the flood was caused by the outburst of the glacier lake.
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