Rescuers search for thousands missing in Nepal-China border floods

Rescuers in Nepal are racing to reach thousands of people missing in areas near the China border after catastrophic floods as search operations enter their 12th day.

The flooding that authorities say was likely caused by a glacial collapse last month has killed at least 1,384 people and left more than 5,500 missing, among them about 800 foreigners, across the two countries.

In Nepal, rescuers have retrieved 1,341 bodies and are searching for about 4,996 people, the national disaster agency said on Sunday. In Tibet, the death toll has risen to 43, with 519 people missing, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

Four people have been found alive since Friday, three of them in tunnels at hydropower facilities, where the government initially said about 100 people could be alive. Nepal’s Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha said teams at flooded hydropower tunnels were facing multiple challenges.

“Search and rescue is going on at the tunnels despite geography, adverse weather and lack of connectivity,” he told the AFP news agency.

On the Chinese side, rescuers face deep mud, poor weather and the risk of further landslides that have slowed work in the narrow gorge.

Nothing remains of a five-storey customs building at Gyirong, once China’s main land port with Nepal, where workers are digging with shovels, excavators and ground-penetrating radar to recover lost people.

The only road into Gyirong reopened on Wednesday, allowing heavy equipment in.

A case of climate justice

Nepal has issued a request that an untested climate emergency mechanism provide aid.

It is asking the United Nations-backed Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage – founded in 2022 to assist developing countries “particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change” – to cover some of the staggering costs of the flood.

The United Nations has appealed for $50m to help more than 84,000 people, saying the destruction makes delivering aid an immense challenge.

On Wednesday, Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal pointed to the role of leading greenhouse gas emitters that have a “historical responsibility to compensate vulnerable nations like Nepal”.

He added that the government has officially filed a “formal climate compensation claim letter” to international partners.

While the exact cause of the glacial collapse remains under investigation, experts say that the frequency and scale of glacier floods have increased as global temperatures have risen.

A United Nations study found that such floods have become nearly five times more frequent since 1950.

Manjeet Dhakal, lead adviser to the UN Least Developed Countries Group on Climate Change, says the global community has a responsibility to cover the cost of disasters afflicting developing nations like Nepal, and that the fund should accept the request.

Countries hit by such disasters are being forced to divert money set aside for health, education and development, he told Al Jazeera. “There are many cases where vulnerable countries are bearing their own cost,” Dhakal said.

The flood was “not caused because of what Nepal has done in the past or in current form”, Dhakal said, noting, “That’s where the global community has a bigger responsibility to come in.”

The UN fund has limited resources, he said. Indeed, its website reflects that it has received only about $631m of $822m in funds pledged by contributing states since inception, and has yet to spend out of the amount.

But, Dhakal said, even a “symbolic amount” could serve as an “inspiring lesson for the fund to justify what it was established for”.

A flood of emotion

Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque, reporting from a Buddhist monastery turned shelter in Kathmandu, said refugees there are still only just beginning to reckon with the trauma of the catastrophe.

“There are people meditating, praying, and there are children. It looks like there is a semblance of normal life,” Haque said. “But make no mistake, I was talking to some of the children here. They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost their families, their homes, their parents.”

About 200 people were brought by helicopter to the holy site, known as the Yellow Monastery, where doctors and volunteers have attended to them.

Haque spoke to a volunteer who had put out drawings for children to express their feelings.

“All of them put their stickers on ‘happy’, he said. Now why is that? The reason, he said, is that the children’s emotions remain suppressed so soon after the crisis,” Haque noted.

“What this volunteer told me is that in the days, months, or years to come, the floods will open, just like the floods open in the Himalayas, and emotions will be poured out.”