The death toll from catastrophic floods in Nepal has surpassed 1,000, while rescue teams are racing against time to locate thousands of missing people, including hundreds of workers believed to be trapped inside mud-filled tunnels.
Nepal's disaster authorities said more than 3,900 people remain missing. More than 600 of them are believed to have been working at hydropower projects along the Trishuli River when the disaster struck.
Race to Reach Trapped Workers
Nepalese and Chinese military personnel are leading the underground rescue operation, with specialists from India, South Korea and Australia also providing assistance.
Rescuers have begun pumping air into some tunnels in the hope that survivors may still be inside. A team managed to enter one tunnel on Monday but found no workers and was forced to withdraw.
The scale of the destruction has made the operation extremely difficult. Huge boulders, mud and debris have covered access routes to several hydropower facilities.
Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah said 279 people had been rescued from the affected sites and that rescue operations had been intensified.
Families Wait for News
Families of missing workers remain hopeful that some may have survived underground. Relatives have urged authorities to accelerate the rescue effort, saying delays are reducing their chances of finding survivors.
At least 11 hydropower projects, either completed or under construction, were damaged by the floods.
Bodies Yet to Be Identified
Authorities are also struggling to identify victims. Only about 4% of the nearly 900 recovered bodies had been identified, according to Nepal's Health Ministry.
Prime Minister Shah linked the scale of the disaster to growing climate risks in the Himalayan region and called for greater international attention to climate-related disasters.
