India puts an 11-member tunnel team on the ground as 320 citizens stay missing in Nepal

An 11-member Indian team of doctors, paramedics and tunnel-rescue specialists landed in Kathmandu with the latest military relief flight, the Ministry of External Affairs said. The group is the first Indian unit sent for search work inside the flood zone rather than for cargo handling alone.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal put the Indian count in one list: 84 rescued, of whom 21 Tamil Nadu travellers had reached India and 63 were workers at the Trishuli-I hydropower project; 149 who crossed from China into Nepal; about 400 still safe on the Chinese side and in touch with the embassy; and 320 missing or unreachable because the phones are down.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said the tunnel brief is specific. At one hydropower site there is a chance people are inside a tunnel. The team is there to check that possibility. Relief cargo handed over in Kathmandu went to Mahabir Pun, Nepal's Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation.

The cargo and the offer still open

Since Wednesday night India has flown 57.5 tonnes of supplies on three, and in some tallies four, IAF sorties. The Friday load was about 10 tonnes. Jaishankar has also offered Bailey bridges and National Disaster Response Force units with equipment. Jaiswal said New Delhi still awaits a reply on the NDRF piece.

That reply sits inside a wider shift in Kathmandu. The Balen Shah government had first kept foreign search teams out, citing the 2015 earthquake, when too many incoming crews jammed coordination. After governments with missing nationals pressed, an inter-ministerial committee cleared specialists from India, China, Australia and South Korea. The permitted work is narrow: tunnel rescue, DNA and forensics, not a general foreign command of the sites.

Who is missing

Nepal Tourism Board figures circulating on Saturday put missing foreigners at 288 Indians in one table, then 100 Chinese, 65 Americans, 53 Ukrainians, 35 Australians and 33 British. Indian tallies from the MEA remain higher on the Indian column because they include people who never registered as tourists and workers at the hydro sites. About 100 people of Indian origin who hold other passports are also out of contact, many of them thought to have been on the Kailash Mansarovar route.

Nepal Police have listed more than 600 recovered bodies. Hospital admissions passed 2,300. Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle told Reuters the first reconstruction range is $4 billion to $5 billion. Official Teej programmes have been cancelled. Staff have been asked to consider a month's salary for the relief fund.

What the Indian team can and cannot do

Tunnel rescue is a specialist skill. It needs gas meters, listening gear, shoring and a medical chain that can treat crush injury and hypothermia. An 11-person unit cannot clear a valley. It can tell Nepali commanders whether a particular heading is worth a push, and treat people pulled out at the mouth.

Weather has already stopped helicopters on some mornings. River levels on the Trishuli rose again with fresh rain. Chinese authorities said a watched glacial lake near the border had shrunk to about 99,000 square metres by Saturday, lowering one burst risk while another larger lake stays under watch.

The MEA has opened a control room and is working through state governments and tour operators. Families in India still have two numbers to hold: 320 missing, and 400 on the Chinese side waiting for a road or an airlift. The tunnel team changes the method of search. It does not yet change those two numbers.