Rescue teams are searching for more than 1,000 missing people after devastating flash floods and landslides struck areas along the Nepal-Tibet border, killing at least 165 people and sweeping away villages.
Nepali police said 162 bodies had been recovered as floodwaters and debris tore through communities along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers.
On the Chinese side of the border, state media reported three deaths, while 558 people remained missing at Gyirong Port in Tibet. The missing included 260 foreign nationals.
The US Geological Survey said the disaster was caused by a glacial collapse that triggered a massive debris flow and severe downstream flooding across parts of Nepal and Tibet.
The agency initially recorded the event as a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. However, subsequent analysis of seismic data and satellite imagery determined that no earthquake had occurred.
Rescue teams were searching through thick mud and debris for survivors, with floodwaters inundating the lower floors of buildings in some of the worst-hit areas.
Nepal’s tourism ministry said 468 tourists remained unaccounted for, including 393 foreigners. Those missing included citizens of India, Australia, Britain, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea and the United States.
Nepali authorities have yet to provide a total for the number of local residents still missing.
Environmental historian Ruth Gamble of La Trobe University described the disaster as being “like an inland tsunami,” with the flood travelling nearly 170 kilometres down the Bhote Koshi valley into central Nepal.
Search-and-rescue operations are continuing across the affected region as authorities work to determine the full scale of the disaster.