Nepal observes day of mourning for flood victims as rescue efforts continue

Nepal held a day of mourning on Monday to remember the victims of the devastating 26 August floods, with government offices lowering flags and family members carrying out mourning rituals.

Monday is the 13th day since the flooding that has killed more than 1,300 people in Nepal and Tibet and left some 5,000 missing including foreigners, according to Nepal’s disaster management agency.

In Hindu-majority Nepal, mourning periods last 13 days and close family members stay at home and relatives visit to pay respect. On the 13th day, rituals are held to pray for the departed souls.

Several people whose family members are still missing have performed symbolic funerals with mourning rituals. In Hindu tradition, cremation is an important final rite and for some families, performing the ceremony even without the bodies of their loved ones provides a sense of spiritual release.

In Kathmandu, family members gathered near the offices of the prime minister and key ministries to demand the government speed up the search and rescue for the hundreds of people who were working on hydropower plants and were either swept by the rushing Bhotekhoshi river buried by the debris.

Search efforts were continuing for hundreds of people who are still unaccounted for.

Rescuers pulled out a Chinese man from a power plant on Saturday and two Nepalese were rescued from the plant on Friday.

Rescue efforts have increasingly focused on 12 hydropower projects, where about 900 workers are missing and roughly 500 are believed to be trapped in various tunnels, authorities said.

Unprecedented challenge

The disaster posed an unprecedented challenge, Australian rescue expert Arnold Dix said on Monday, with multiple search operations underway in hydropower tunnels.

"We are facing something I have never faced before," said Dix, president of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association, in a post on social media.

"Not one rescue, but multiple potential rescues, unfolding at the same time, in different places, each with its own dangers, uncertainties, and lives that may still be saved."

Rescue efforts continue "with the same tempo we had on day one," Nepal Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet told the AFP news agency on Monday.

"Our focus is on search and rescue at three levels - on ground, by air, and in the tunnels. We are making sure that no one is still stranded."

The rescue of three workers from deep inside tunnels at the weekend buoyed hopes of finding other survivors.

Specialised rescue teams from India, China, South Korea and the United States have been searching through debris, damaged structures and tunnels at the projects, hoping to find survivors.

"We are measured not only by the lives we save, but by the lives we refuse to abandon," said Dix, a key adviser during the Indian rescue of 41 men trapped for 17 days inside the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand state in 2023.

"Silkyara taught me never to confuse unlikely with impossible," he said.