Rescue teams in Nepal are searching for at least 33 British nationals who are among those missing after flash floods ravaged its border with Tibet, killing more than 380 people.
Nearly 1,400 people are missing, most of them tourists, authorities have said, after a glacier collapse triggered floods that roared down valleys and razed entire villages.
Nepal police said 389 bodies had been recovered and the number of injured and rescued people had reached 466.
Nepal’s national disaster risk reduction and management authority said the number of out-of-contact foreign nationals had increased to 517.
The tour company Kailash Journeys confirmed it had not been able to account for seven UK nationals – five women and two men aged between 18 and 55 – travelling with the operator.
Another tour company, the Trekkers’ Society, said among the British citizens who had been completing one of its tours to the sacred Hindu site of Mount Kailash were four males aged 14, 50, 50 and 54, and five women aged 40, 46, 50, 50 and 53.
The tour operator Alpine Eco Trek said a 13-year-old girl was among the missing British nationals and two Irish citizens were also missing. They were on a nine-day tour to Mount Kailash and crossing into Tibet from Nepal when they became trapped at the border as the flash floods struck.
Other missing British nationals with Alpine Eco Trek are three men aged 65, 64 and 52, and seven women aged 44, 47, 51, 60, 63, 63 and 65, according to travel logs.
The tour company Himalayan Glacier US told the BBC it had lost contact with a group of 47 guests, including two British citizens, who were en route to Mount Kailash. Fishtail Tours, a Nepali travel agency, said one British person was missing.
Among those missing with links to the UK are Sarada Simkhada, a senior nurse at Darent Valley Hospital in Kent, who was making a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash.
Her brother Shambhu wrote on social media: “My dear sister, wherever you are, please stay strong. We are praying for your safety every moment and waiting desperately for you to return home.”
Leena Bector, a director of a care agency from Slough, west London, is among 27 travellers associated with the Fishtail Tours and Travels group currently unaccounted for.
Hema Amin, from Croydon in south London, started a pilgrimage to Gosainkunda lake on Monday that was supposed to last until 4 September.
Her husband, Sunil Amin, told Sky News: “I keep trying to call her. I’ve been trying, trying, trying.”
Nabhi Nandan Das, 64, a Hindu priest from south London, was leading a group on a tour to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar.
Mala and Bipin Patel, from Coventry, went missing after travelling to Nepal and Tibet on a pilgrimage. Their son, Anant Patel, told Sky News he was “shocked” at the lack of information about their whereabouts.
Pramod Poudel, from Uckfield, East Sussex, told the BBC that his wife, Sumitra Sapkota, as well as his parents, brother and uncle, had been caught in flash flooding. He said he would fly to Nepal on Thursday night to try to make contact with them.
Poudel said: “I guess there is no power so they can’t charge their phones – to be honest, it’s a very hard and difficult time at the moment.”
In an emotional interview, he said: “I have seen pictures of where my home town used to be … and there is nothing there now.”
Andy Burnham has pledged an initial £5m in UK government support and offered to send emergency responders and rescue support to assist Nepal’s disaster response efforts. Speaking to journalists during a visit to south Wales, he said: “It’s a devastating picture that is emerging from what has happened in Nepal. Scenes that we’ve never seen the like before, I don’t think, certainly the scale of the devastation.
“So there is immediate action being taken. We are deploying consular support staff to the region so that British nationals will be able to access support 24/7. Obviously there are a number of British nationals who currently are thought to be missing and we’ll be providing all the support we can to their families in what is a very distressing and devastating situation.”
He added in a statement: “In the past, Nepal has been there for Britain in our hour of need, and we will be there for Nepal in its hour of need right now.”
King Charles said he and Queen Camilla were heartbroken and sent their “most profound sympathy” to those affected. “Many in the United Kingdom have strong, deep and personal ties to this part of the world,” he said.
The Prince and Princess of Wales also expressed their shock. “We are thinking of everyone caught up in this terrible disaster,” they said.
The president of the Nepal Centre for Disaster Management, Bishal Nath Upreti, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the flash floods were like a “tsunami from the sky”. He said: “It’s a huge debris, and in fact, after the 2015 earthquake, this is one of the largest disasters that we have [had] in Nepal.”
He added: “It was such a huge amount of water. You can imagine it is 20m cubic metres excess water on the river … Villages and villages along the almost 40 to 50 kilometres were completely wiped out.”
The Nepal tourism board said on Wednesday that 33 UK citizens were among the foreign nationals unaccounted for. At least three people had died in Tibet, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV, while the Xinhua news agency said 558 people were unaccounted for in the region.
Rescuers are racing to locate people missing in the mountainous Rasuwa region, which borders China’s autonomous region of Tibet and is popular with trekkers and pilgrims.
The UK minister Pat McFadden told Times Radio the picture was “not completely clear yet”, with “many, many more” people understood to be missing than those reported by the Nepalese authorities, and no clear figures from China yet.
He said: “In terms of missing Britons, my colleague the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has posted on social media phone numbers that people can call for further information.
“But it’s a fast-moving picture. We don’t have a full picture yet of the numbers missing.”
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was “deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by the floods in Nepal”. It added: “British nationals in Nepal should follow local authority advice and exercise caution while travelling. For consular assistance call (+44) (0)207 008 5000 or (+977) (0)14237100.”
