The death toll from catastrophic flooding in Nepal has risen to 734 as rescuers battle persistent rain and difficult terrain, while more than 540 people remain missing across the border in Tibet.
Nepal’s disaster management agency announced the new casualty figure on Sunday as the search and rescue operation entered its fifth day.
In Tibet, Chinese authorities said 16 people had been confirmed dead while 546 remained missing following Wednesday’s landslide.
Chinese state media said 261 of those missing were foreign nationals from 23 countries, including 15 British citizens.
Search teams continued to comb through thick mud and debris around the border area but had found no survivors so far.
Gyirong Port, one of the areas affected, is the main crossing point for tourists travelling from Kathmandu towards the sacred Mount Kailash in Tibet.
Rescue efforts have also been complicated by continuing rainfall, with forecasts indicating that wet conditions could persist until at least Monday.
Many people are believed to remain trapped inside hydropower tunnels in northern Nepal, where thick mud has prevented rescue workers from gaining access.
India and China have deployed experts to assist the operation, while international aid has continued to arrive as authorities search for hundreds of missing foreign nationals.
The United States has pledged $3.6 million in humanitarian assistance, while the United Kingdom has sent a rapid deployment team to Nepal to support British citizens affected by the disaster.
United Nations Resident Coordinator in Nepal, Lila Pieters Yahia, said the terrain was making it extremely difficult to deliver assistance to affected communities.
“But it’s difficult to bring it to reach the people because the access is extremely difficult,” Yahia said.
She said the Nepalese government had begun airlifting supplies by helicopter and was considering the use of drones to improve aid delivery.
“The weather is not helping us,” she added.
Authorities have issued a rainfall warning for the disaster zone until Monday.
Thousands of people have already been rescued despite the scale of the destruction.
Scientists believe the flash flooding may have been triggered by a “glacial collapse”, in which all or part of a glacier breaks apart, causing devastating downstream flooding.
In Tibet, authorities said the immediate danger from a lake formed by landslide debris appeared to have eased.
Officials, however, warned that further mudslides remained possible and said monitoring stations had been established to alert rescue teams operating along the border.
The disaster is Nepal’s worst in more than a decade, with families of those still missing increasingly fearing the worst as rescue operations continue.
