Nepal flood toll reaches 1,356 as rescuers push into the Chilime tunnel

Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority recorded 1,356 dead on 7 September and 4,994 still missing. The count rose again as bodies were pulled from Chitwan, the two Nawalparasi districts, Nuwakot and Rasuwa, thirteen days after an ice-rock avalanche on the Nepal-Tibet border sent water and debris down the Bhotekoshi.

Chitwan now holds the largest share of recovered bodies at 363. Nawalparasi East follows with 223, Nawalparasi West with 221, Nuwakot with 197 and Rasuwa with 169. Gorkha, Dhading and Tanahun add 75, 70 and 38. Only 98 bodies have been handed to families. District police offices are taking DNA samples with two photographs and proof of kinship because many remains are incomplete or too damaged to recognise.

The missing list is heavier than the confirmed dead. Nuwakot accounts for about 2,340 people and Rasuwa about 1,967. About 100 security personnel and government officials have not been found. Foreign nationals number 587 on the missing roll. Earlier in the week a US State Department spokesman put about 75 Americans among those still unaccounted for. India's external affairs ministry has asked relatives of missing Indians to submit DNA after Chinese authorities said they could receive samples. More than 13,396 people have been rescued.

The trigger was an ice-and-rock collapse near the border on 26 August, around 10:59 local time according to satellite records of the event. Water, mud and stone moved down the Bhotekoshi and then the Trishuli system, taking houses, vehicles, roads, bridges and several hydropower sites with them. Landsat-9 images processed by the European Space Agency two hours after the collapse show the inundation against a Copernicus Sentinel-2 picture from 24 August. Tibet recorded further deaths and missing people on the Chinese side of the same surge. Combined tallies published earlier in the week put the two-country death figure above 1,380 and the missing figure above 5,500.

Rescue work has shifted from open riverbeds to underground works. Officials say around 121 hydropower workers may still be inside tunnels. Lawmaker Shri Ram Neupane told Reuters that four of six people missing at the Chilime project in Rasuwa could still be alive. Indian Ambassador Naveen Srivastava said a joint India-Nepal technical team had laid a safety rope and brought in a large mud pump to clear slush from the Chilime tunnel. Australian tunnel specialist Arnold Dix, who worked on the 2023 Silkyara rescue in Uttarakhand, is advising the search. Rescuers had to use satellite pictures to find some tunnel mouths under the mud.

The Nepal Army said tunnel searches will continue until there is a breakthrough or the government orders a stop. Three people have already come out of other tunnels: Kabir Maharjan, 45, a mechanical supervisor, and Sanjay Sah, 30, a foreman, from Trishuli 3A, and a Chinese national from a tunnel linked to Upper Trishuli I after ten days underground. In Nuwakot, 60-year-old Chandika Shrestha was pulled alive from a four-storey house after ten days under mud.

Identification is now a second disaster. Of bodies recovered in earlier phases, hundreds arrived with parts missing. Indian forensic teams have processed more than 1,200 DNA samples. Nepal asked other governments for high-capacity drones, Bailey bridges, DNA kits, tunnel rescue suits and epidemic-prevention supplies. The flag has flown at half-mast at home and at missions abroad. The Nepal Red Cross has moved dignity kits, medicines and psychosocial volunteers into Rasuwa, where police posts at Timure, Rasuwagadhi and Syabrubesi were wrecked.

A 252-metre temporary track has reopened the Krishnabhir section of the Prithvi Highway in Dhading, restoring a road link between Kathmandu and western Nepal. That is one of the few ordinary routes back in use. Schools remain closed in several flood belts. Hydropower plants that fed the grid are still silent.

The numbers will move again. Downstream districts keep finding remains days after the surge passed. Tunnel work is slow because every metre of slush has to be pumped before a camera can look ahead. The question for this week is whether anyone is still alive behind the mud in Chilime, and how many of the 4,994 missing will ever be named.