Nepal floods rescue 117 tourists, efforts intensify to find missing Korean workers

[Financial News] Two days after massive floods and landslides hit the border region between Nepal and China, about 117 tourists have been rescued. The death toll has risen to 543.
According to foreign media outlets including AFP, Nepalese rescue authorities said in an announcement on the 28th that at least 538 people had died in the floods on the 26th. In the same statement, authorities said 977 people were missing, including 517 foreigners.
Around 8:37 a.m. on the 26th, a large-scale flood struck the Bagmati Province area in north-central Nepal, near the border with China. The flood also triggered major landslides on the Chinese side. On the 27th, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television reported that three people had died and 558 were missing after a landslide the previous day in Jilong County, Xigaze City, in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Among the missing, 260 were foreign nationals. Chinese authorities later said on the 28th that the death toll had risen to five, but they did not revise the number of missing. The combined number of missing people on both sides stood at 1,553.
Nepalese authorities said on the 28th that 14,829 people had been deployed to rescue and search operations, and that 3,742 people had been rescued so far. On the same day, the local outlet Online Khabar, citing the Nepal Tourism Board, claimed that the cumulative number of tourists rescued since the floods began had reached 117. Those rescued included 85 Indians, 16 Chinese nationals, nine Koreans, two Italians and two Americans.
The Koreans mentioned by local authorities are believed to be those rescued the previous day. At the time of the disaster on the 26th, 10 Koreans were stranded in the area, and nine others were separately reported missing. Of the 10 stranded people, nine were moved to a safe area by military helicopter on the 27th, while the whereabouts of the nine missing remain unconfirmed.



The Kathmandu Post reported that South Korea, India, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had asked the Nepalese government to allow their own search-and-rescue teams to join the operation. Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nepal, said, "It is natural for others to offer help," but added, "Our security agencies are carrying out the search and rescue operation, and we do not need such assistance at the moment." He also said, "The Nepalese security forces have enough capability to carry out rescue operations," and added, "If we need specialized help or expertise, we will ask for it then."
That day, Nepalese military authorities worked to rescue about 100 people trapped inside the flooded tunnel of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project. The facility, the largest of its kind in Nepal, was under construction by missing workers from Doosan Enerbility and Korea South-East Power. Raja Ram Basnet, spokesperson for the Nepalese Army, said, "We deployed two helicopters, but it is difficult even to locate the tunnel entrance."
David Fisher, head of the Nepal delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said at a press conference in Geneva on the same day that at least 93,000 people had been affected. "Urgent assistance is needed, and the risk of a secondary flood is also a major concern," he said.
Experts suspect the flood began when glaciers in the Himalayas melted and collapsed. According to the investigation, a glacier about 600 meters wide broke apart together with rocks at an altitude of 5,200 meters on Langtang Lirung, which rises to 7,234 meters above sea level. The impact was analyzed as being comparable to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake. The glacier and debris flow then swept about 70 kilometers downstream from the Lende River to the Trishuli River, likely causing the massive flooding.



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