Nepal flood toll reaches 1,355 as 4,996 remain missing on day 13

Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority put the death toll from the 26 August Bhote Koshi and Trishuli floods at 1,355 on Monday, 7 September, the thirteenth day of the search. The missing list stood near 4,996. That list includes about 589 foreign nationals and around 100 security personnel and government staff. Rescuers have pulled 13,396 people to safety. Only 98 bodies have been identified and handed to families.

The Foreign Ministry's 2 p.m. situation note said four people had been found alive in the previous four days: two Nepalis in the Upper Trishuli 3A tunnel on 4 September, one Chinese national in the Upper Trishuli 1 tunnel, and one Nepali in a house in Betrawati on 5 September. Tunnel crews from India, China and South Korea are working with the Nepali Army in hydropower adits where hundreds of workers were thought to be trapped when the water came through.

Bodies have been recovered far downstream of the original scars. NDRRMA's district counts on Monday put 363 in Chitwan, 222 or 223 in Nawalparasi East, 221 in Nawalparasi West, 197 in Nuwakot, 169 in Rasuwa, 75 in Gorkha, 70 in Dhading and 38 in Tanahu. Rasuwa and Nuwakot still account for most of the missing, about 1,967 and 2,340 on one official breakdown. Police have asked relatives to give DNA samples at district offices, with two photographs and proof of kinship.

Why identification is failing

Most of the dead recovered after being carried downriver were damaged, decomposed or incomplete. Water and mud erase faces. Distance from the collapse sites erases context. A body found in Chitwan may have started in Rasuwa. That is why the identified count sits at 98 against more than 1,300 recovered. It is also why the missing number can fall only slowly. Some of those listed as missing are already in morgues without names.

The trigger was an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on 26 August. The surge moved down the Bhote Koshi and into the Trishuli system, tearing through towns, roads, bridges and hydropower works in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading and districts farther south. Nepal declared a national day of mourning on Monday. President Ram Chandra Poudel called for continued search work and national unity. Lamps were lit for the dead.

Security strength on the ground is large. NDRRMA has cited 21,465 personnel: 7,975 from Nepal Police, 9,287 from the army and 4,203 from the Armed Police Force. Relief has moved by 83 truckloads and 38 jeeps from Kathmandu, nine helicopter flights, and 173 Armed Police Force airlifts into Rasuwa and Nuwakot. About 3,650 people were in 39 camps in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading and Kathmandu on one official tally. Injured counts have run above 6,000.

Foreign missing and the China file

The Foreign Ministry put foreigners on the missing list at about 600 from 35 countries. An earlier NDRRMA figure was 589. Rising Nepal recorded 587 tourists from 34 countries among the missing after the Bhote Koshi flood. Those numbers will be reconciled as embassies check hotel books and trekking permits against recovered remains. The gap between 587 and 600 is the difference between a list frozen on one morning and a list still being edited.

Reporting from the Chinese side of the same event has been thinner. NPR noted on Monday that little is known, a week on, about China's dead or missing at Gyirong and related sites. Nepal publishes daily district tables. Beijing has not matched that cadence in public. The contrast is now part of the story because the avalanche started on a border that both capitals treat as sensitive, and because Chinese tunnel specialists are among the crews still underground in Nepal.

Cash support from Kathmandu includes 10 million Nepalese rupees each for Rasuwa and Nuwakot, 5 million for Dhading and 135 million for 15 local governments. Those sums will not settle DNA labs or reopen a washed-out highway on their own. The operational question on day 13 is narrower. How long do tunnel teams keep cutting when the last live rescue was 5 September, and how does a state bury more than a thousand people when fewer than a hundred have names?

The answer will show up first in the identification count, not the death toll. The death toll will rise as rivers give up more remains. The missing list will fall only when those remains match a family. Until then, 4,996 is both a search order and a ledger of people who have not come home.