NUWAKOT, Nepal – The death toll from catastrophic Himalayan glacial floods has crossed 1 000, with rescue teams racing against time to find survivors, including dozens feared trapped in hydropower tunnels.

Nearly 4 500 people remain missing after a massive wave of freezing water, rocks and debris from a high-altitude glacial collapse tore downstream last Wednesday. Entire settlements were wiped out, leaving a trail of destruction across Nepal.

Rescue teams are drilling, digging and blasting through debris in dangerous conditions to reach around 100 hydropower workers believed trapped in several tunnels. So far, only bodies have been recovered from the sludge-filled tunnels.

Race to find survivors

“We are focused on search and rescue efforts at the tunnels, our work is continuing,” Raja Ram Basnet, Nepal Army spokesman, told AFP on Tuesday.

“Our soldiers are also deployed to collect bodies and prevent the spread of disease.”

With mortuaries overflowing in Nepal, authorities have started burying hundreds of unidentified bodies after DNA sampling. At least 17 bodies have been pulled from rivers far downstream in India.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah has called the catastrophe “unimaginable and heartbreaking”.

Desperate search for loved ones

In Kathmandu, crowds lined up outside a hospital searching for missing relatives, posting photographs on a long wall in fading hope of finding them alive.

Debu Sapkota (58), a driver, came to post photos of his 83-year-old mother-in-law and granddaughter who went missing in Trishuli Bazaar after being swept away by the surge.

A warning alert sounded, but the elderly woman was “too old to run”, he said.

“Her granddaughter was helping her escape but both were swept away.”

Sapkota says he no longer has “any hope that they survived”, after witnesses saw them being carried away.

“I am here hoping to find their bodies,” he said, holding photos of the two missing women dressed in traditional clothes.

In Chitwan district, mourning relatives cremated some of the dead. Soldiers were seen unloading bodies from helicopters in Nepal’s Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts.

Aid needs are enormous. Entire communities have been swept away, leaving families homeless and sheltering under plastic sheeting as heavy rain continues. Roads and dozens of bridges have been destroyed, along with power plants.

“There are too many challenges,” said police officer E Hawadi in badly affected Nuwakot district.

In Nuwakot, people scoured through mud and rubble of their homes for usable items, some clearing away dirt and stringing up plastic sheeting for shelter in the ruins.

Climate change blamed

Foreigners missing include 583 in Nepal and 261 in China, from more than 30 nations. They include tourists who had come trekking in the Himalayas, as well as Hindu pilgrims seeking spiritual peace at Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash.

There is growing anger at the scale of destruction to hit Nepal, a largely rural nation of 30 million people that has contributed little to global warming but is suffering its consequences.

“It is now time for us to strongly raise with the international community the issue of the disasters we are experiencing as a result of climate change,” Shah said in a statement late Monday.

Scientists say the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range, are melting faster as global temperatures rise.

Nepal’s economy is already under pressure, with limited resources to respond to a disaster of this scale. Kathmandu has warned reconstruction costs could run into the “billions of dollars”.

China’s response questioned

Nepal said 987 bodies had been recovered, and listed 3 916 as missing. China’s state media reports 16 dead and 546 people missing. That takes the overall number of dead to 1 003, and missing to 4 462.

In China, Tibet is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists, and Chinese authorities are the only source of official information.

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Emergency workers, officials and residents in Tibet held memorial services on Tuesday.

“Rescuers, local officials and residents stood in silence to mourn the victims,” China’s official news agency Xinhua said.

More than 2 000 people are aiding rescue operations, including soldiers, Xinhua added. Teams were “working around the clock to search for survivors, repair roads, set up communication base stations and restore power lines”, it said on Tuesday.

But Tibetan advocacy groups in exile have questioned China’s account of the disaster.

Tencho Gyatso, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, called for China to disclose “complete and verifiable information about the damage and casualties”.

Beijing’s foreign ministry said Monday that the “release of information has been open, transparent and timely”, and rejected international reports that it was underreporting deaths.

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