Second Indian flight lifts 37.5 tonnes of flood aid to Nepal

A second Indian relief aircraft left for Nepal on Thursday morning with 37.5 tonnes of humanitarian cargo, medicines and food packets, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said. The flight follows a 10-tonne load sent on Wednesday night on an IAF C-130J from Hindon. Combined, the two sorties put 47.5 tonnes on the ground in two days.

Jaishankar wrote that India remains in “close and continuous touch” with Nepalese authorities and will keep supporting the relief effort. He later held a review with Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, the ministry team, and the ambassadors in Kathmandu and Beijing. The Beijing line matters because the flood began on the Tibet side of the border after a glacial collapse, a finding the U.S. Geological Survey has now backed against the first earthquake reading.

In Kathmandu, Ambassador Naveen Srivastava handed the first consignment to Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Khadak Raj Paudel. The packs include shelters, blankets, hygiene kits, solar lamps and medicines. More loads are expected in the coming days. C-17 and C-130J aircraft have been assigned to the airlift. NDRF teams are on standby if Nepal asks for them. Twenty NDRF units are already watching the Bihar and Uttar Pradesh approaches, where officials said Thursday that no flood pulse had arrived.

Nepal Police said Thursday morning that 162 bodies had been taken from riverbanks in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Chitwan, Gorkha, Tanahu and both Nawalparasi districts. Other tallies in circulation put the dead above 165 in Nepal alone and the missing, Nepali and foreign, well into the hundreds. One Kathmandu count listed 1,433 people out of contact. Indian officials have spoken of more than 100 Indian nationals missing; Nepal’s foreign minister Shishir Khanal has used a higher Indian figure in some briefings. The numbers are still moving because the rivers have not given the dead back in one place.

Prime Minister Balendra Shah inspected affected ground in Nuwakot and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the call and the aid. The Nepal embassy in New Delhi issued its own thanks on Thursday. The United States announced $500,000 in emergency funds. Search capacity on the Nepali side now includes more than 7,400 security personnel in the Bhote Koshi belt, according to local reporting. Unregulated helicopter flights were ordered stopped. More than 1,000 vehicles were stranded on blocked roads, with dozens of buses still unaccounted for.

The second flight is logistics, not a scientific update. The science file is already public: ice and rock fell about 1.2 kilometres, the seismic signal looked like a magnitude 4.4 event, and the pulse ran down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli. China’s foreign ministry has rejected claims that a dam failure started the flood. ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre has released early satellite comparisons of the glacier surface. Those images will matter for the next warning. Thursday’s 37.5 tonnes are for people who are cold, wet and short of food now.

India’s Neighbourhood First phrasing will be written into every official note. The operational fact is simpler. Two military transports have flown in 24 hours, the political channel between Modi and Shah is open, and the missing list still includes Indian pilgrims and workers who were on the same roads as everyone else when the water came down.