As Nepal entered the final day of traditional Hindu mourning, families continued to grieve the hundreds killed in a devastating flood along the country’s border with China while rescue teams pressed on after four people were brought out alive in recent days.
Government offices across the Hindu-majority nation of 30 million people, as well as Nepal’s diplomatic missions overseas, were to fly the national flag at half-mast, the home ministry said. The observance marked the 13th day since the deaths.
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For Hindu devotees, the day traditionally brings the mourning period to a close through religious rituals and offerings of food.
On 26 August, a glacier broke away and sent a massive surge of mud and rock into a river along Nepal’s Himalayan border with China’s Tibet. The flood swept through towns and villages, while roads and highways disappeared beneath thick layers of mud and debris.
Relatives of Hom Bahadur Tamang, who went missing in the flash floods, take part in Buddhist prayers in Trishuli
Rescuers in Nepal have recovered four people alive in recent days, including a Chinese national pulled from a tunnel on Saturday.
Two of the other survivors were hydropower workers rescued from a separate tunnel on Friday, while a Nepali woman was found alive inside her buried home on Saturday.
Search efforts were concentrated around hydropower stations in the affected region, army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet said, as officials believed additional survivors could still be trapped there.
In Tibet, Chinese officials said yesterday that workers had recovered 12 more bodies as crews continued searching for hundreds of people still unaccounted for.
No ceremonies amid ongoing search
The government planned no broader public events for the final day of mourning while rescue crews remained engaged in the search for survivors.
“There are no government programmes organised as the rescue and search operation is still going on in the flood-hit areas,” Phanindra Paudel of the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) told Reuters.
Rescuers carry one of the two men found alive in a tunnel at the Trishuli Hydropower Plant last week
President Ram Chandra Paudel, Nepal’s ceremonial head of state, was visiting areas struck by the floods and was expected to inspect the destruction, an aide said.
At a district jail in Nuwakot, one of the two hardest-hit districts, security personnel moved 923 prisoners to a higher building before flood waters reached their low-lying facility, Prime Minister Balendra Shah said in a social media post.
Authorities also recaptured 50 prisoners who broke through the prison wall and gates as the flooding began. They had fled only about 100 metres, Mr Shah said.
