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Authorities in Nepal and China reported on August 27 that the death toll from the previous day’s floods stood at more than 165 with the number expected to increase as rescue operations continued. Reuters data placed nearly 1,500 people as missing including over 700 foreigners from multiple nations. Nepal’s police put the local death toll at 162 while China confirmed three fatalities in Tibet with 558 missing there a state broadcaster reported.
The disaster hit a popular trekking and pilgrimage route with many tourists among the unaccounted for. Police and tourism officials in Nepal listed 826 missing in the country of whom almost 500 were foreigners with India, the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada supplying the largest groups according to Reuters. Malaysian authorities separately said 55 of their nationals were uncontactable without confirming any deaths.
Survivors described the horror of watching loved ones swept away in the sudden torrent. Kalpana Malla from Nepal’s Nuwakot district told the BBC that her father mother sister and sister’s children were claimed by the flood in front of her eyes. “This flood took everything but my son and I climbed the rooftop of a house and survived but couldn’t explain how” she said.
Malla’s son Sugam recounted saving his mother by pulling her hand while expressing worry that his sister whose phone he had given her remained unreachable. At a hospital in Kathmandu families waited anxiously for news with one woman stating her husband had last been in contact at 8pm before his phone went silent. Trekking guide Sonam Dorjee who left the village of Rasiwa Syafru just before the flood hit described hearing a sound like an earthquake and later learning his house had collapsed with several family members including his sister now missing.
The US Geological Survey concluded that the seismic signal initially mistaken for a magnitude 4.4 earthquake was in fact produced by a glacial collapse and debris flow. Al Jazeera reported the collapse occurred around 8:40am local time high in the Himalayas sending floods downstream. Scientists have linked the increasing frequency of such events to rapid warming in the region with glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya losing ice 65 percent faster in the 2011-2020 period than the decade before according to assessments cited by Al Jazeera.
Nepal has lost close to one-third of its glacial ice volume in the past three decades a trend that has expanded glacial lakes and destabilised slopes according to research highlighted by WIRED. Similar floods struck the same Bhote Koshi river system in 2025 destroying infrastructure that had only recently been repaired Nepali Times reported. Both governments have mobilised extensive rescue efforts with China’s President Xi Jinping calling for all-out searches and Nepal rushing aid to cut-off villages Reuters stated.
