Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority put the toll from Wednesday’s Bhotekoshi flood at 903 bodies and 4,247 people unaccounted for in its 9am bulletin on Monday (Kathmandu Post). Chinese authorities separately report 16 dead and 546 missing in Gyirong County, across the border in Tibet.
Which number is which
Added together, the cross-border totals are 919 dead and 4,793 missing (Express Tribune/Anadolu). That resolves an apparent conflict on the wires: Tribune’s “nearly 4,800” and Reuters’ “nearly 5,000” — the version Dawn and Geo carry — are the same 4,793, rounded in opposite directions (Dawn/Reuters). Neither is Nepal’s own 4,247.
Both Nepali figures decompose exactly. The 903 bodies are Chitwan 272, Nawalparasi East 207, Nawalparasi West 151, Nuwakot 95, Gorkha 62, Dhading 55, Tanahun 37 and Rasuwa 24 — most recovered hundreds of kilometres downstream. The 4,247 missing are 1,558 in Nuwakot, 865 in Rasuwa, 933 hydropower workers, 592 foreign nationals, 127 Nepalis travelling with them, 83 security personnel and 89 others. A further 10,451 people have been rescued.
We reported 768 bodies on Sunday; the missing count has jumped from 2,502, almost entirely because Nuwakot filed its list. Higher numbers circulating online come from the government’s crowd-submitted rescue portal, which showed 12,819 missing on Monday and duplicates heavily (OnlineKhabar).
The tunnels
Nobody has come out of a hydropower tunnel alive since Friday. Three bodies have come out.
The Nepali Army set off a controlled blast at Upper Trishuli 3A at 2am on Monday, dug about 10 metres down with two excavators, and is now clearing water, mud and sediment (OnlineKhabar). It located the tunnel crown on Sunday afternoon and drilled through; water stood high inside the roughly seven-metre-wide tunnel, and there was no response when rescuers called out. Military officers estimate at least 35 people are inside; Nepal Police puts it around 200; 30 to 40 Nepal Electricity Authority technicians and engineers were in the underground powerhouse for an annual overhaul (Kathmandu Post, Kathmandu Post).
At Chilime, a joint Indian-Nepali team reached 100 metres into a 250-metre tunnel and recovered two bodies; six staff are believed to have been inside, the project’s chief executive says (OnlineKhabar). At Upper Trishuli-1, teams got 300 metres in and recovered one body, with searches also running at Trishuli 3B and Langtang. At the Rasuwa Hydropower Project, an army drone team reached the innermost section on Monday, found nobody and withdrew to Dhunche (OnlineKhabar).
Friday’s rescue of four workers remains contested: OnlineKhabar placed it at Upper Trishuli 3A, the Kathmandu Post at the Rasuwa intake tunnel. Neither has revisited it, and Monday’s Rasuwa search report does not address it.
“A large amount of debris has been deposited and that is posing us a big challenge to open the tunnels,” army spokesman Rajaram Basnet told Reuters.
Water and help
Work ran through Sunday night, but Reuters reports operations have been halted several times since Friday for bad weather and fears that a border lake overflowing into Nepal’s rivers could flood again. A second lake, formed by a landslide 2.8km downstream, has largely drained on its own, Chinese state television says. Attention has shifted to an impact crater on the Nepali side, grown to 174,000 square metres holding an estimated 2.5 million cubic metres by Saturday evening; a breach could cascade downstream (Geo News/Reuters).
Nepal has refused foreign teams for the general search but asked for tunnel specialists. Nine Chinese rescuers landed on Saturday with thermal cameras, drilling rigs and air pumps and are at Hakubesi; an Indian Air Force team with DNA-collection experts is at Syafrubesi. Those are the two foreign contingents actually on the ground, alongside 20,819 Nepali security personnel.
Two Nepali officials told Reuters that China has shared little glacier and water-level data since a cooperation meeting earlier this year, and that the gap could blunt Nepal’s preparedness for the next one.
