Indian tunnel team reaches Trishuli as 287 Indians remain missing in Nepal

An 11-member Indian team of tunnel-rescue specialists and medical staff reached the Trishuli belt of Nepal on Saturday to help open hydropower tunnels blocked by Wednesday's flash flood. The Indian Embassy said the group arrived Friday night and spent Saturday on the ground in Rasuwa after an aerial look at Chilime and Langtang. An 82-member joint unit of the Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police has been digging at the silted mouth of the Trishuli-3A tunnel since Friday night.

The human ledger is still moving. Nepal Police had recovered 675 bodies by Saturday. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority listed about 2,418 people missing, a figure that has included 933 hydropower workers and hundreds of foreign nationals in earlier tallies. India's Ministry of External Affairs said 287 Indian nationals remained untraceable and that 167 Indians had been rescued or accounted for among 261 foreign tourists brought out of the zone. The embassy separately said the Nepal Army had pulled 88 Indian workers from Upper Trishuli tunnel sites. Four Indians were rescued at a Rasuwa hydropower project. About 120 Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims crossed from China into Nepal.

Upper Trishuli-1, a 216-megawatt run-of-river project, is the hardest single site. Around 1,350 people were on the job when the flood hit. Uttam Bhlom of the Independent Power Producers' Association of Nepal said 576 people there were still uncontactable on Friday night. IPPAN's wider count of hydropower workers out of contact has run as high as 934. Nepal Army figures say 191 workers have been brought out of tunnels across several projects. More than 100 people are still believed to be inside the Upper Trishuli-1 tunnel, behind mud that machines are only now reaching.

Kathmandu first said it did not need foreign search teams. That line changed after governments with missing citizens pressed. India offered a tunnel crew, doctors and the National Disaster Response Force. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar spoke to Nepali counterpart Shisir Khanal. China flew five tunnel experts by helicopter from Gyirong in Tibet, landing in the disaster belt at 4:58 p.m. Beijing time on Saturday, Xinhua said. Wang Yi told Khanal that cash and relief stock were moving and that satellite, hydrological and barrier-lake warnings had been shared. Premier Li Qiang had already gone to Gyirong. Xi Jinping sent condolences to President Ram Chandra Poudel.

India has airlifted 57 tonnes of relief and sent six forensic teams for DNA work on remains. More than 11,000 Nepali security personnel are on the search, including over 5,000 from the army. Official Teej programmes were cancelled. A barrier lake upstream had forced a short pause in rescue on Friday. Officials later said the overflow risk was manageable and work resumed.

The flood began when a glacial collapse on the Tibetan side sent rock, ice and mud down the Lhenge Khola and into the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli system on 26 August. Roads and bridges vanished. Hydropower camps sat on the river. That is why so many of the missing are workers, and why a tunnel mouth packed with silt is now the main engineering problem. Specialists can say whether anyone behind the plug still has air. They cannot invent time. Saturday was day four.