Kathmandu [Nepal], September 2: The death toll from the flood catastrophe in the Himalayas has risen to well over 1,000 across Nepal and Tibet, authorities said on Tuesday.
Police in Kathmandu said in their latest figures that 1,058 people had died in Nepal alone, including 65 children. China's death toll for the Tibet region has stood at 16 for several days.
Authorities in Nepal said many of the bodies recovered were badly disfigured and in some cases already severely decomposed.
Among the dead are some 390 corpses that could not be identified, police said.
The number of people missing in Nepal has risen to almost 5,100, according to a police spokesman. Nearly 550 people were still missing in Tibet.
Hundreds of foreign nationals have been unaccounted for since the disaster struck last Wednesday.
The devastating flash flood, carrying water, mud, ice and debris, swept away everything in its path in the border region.
Experts believe a massive glacier collapse on the Tibetan side triggered the disaster. Many villages have been completely destroyed, leaving residents with nothing.
Thousands of emergency workers are continuing to search through masses of debris and buried tunnels for those still missing.
The missing include hundreds of hydropower workers who were caught when the hit flood 12 power plants, which were either in operation or under construction.
24 found dead in one building
A total of 24 bodies were found in a single building in Betrawati, one of the hardest-hit towns in Nepal's Nuwakot district, according to police.
This is one of the highest numbers of bodies found at a single site during the rescue operation.
"We have already recovered eight but 16 more dead still need to be recovered," said Iqbal Hawari, deputy police chief of Nuwakot.
Rescue teams are increasingly reaching badly affected and remote mountain areas by land. Up until now, the emergency teams have mainly relied on air transport.
Bad weather and the threat of further flash floods have also hampered rescue efforts.
No full list of missing
The full extent of the disaster remains unclear partly because the figures of people missing are still preliminary, police spokesman Abi Narayan Kafle told dpa.
There are no complete lists of names because most of the information came by telephone from relatives, friends and others, he said.
Compiling a full list will take some time, the spokesman said. In addition, only bone fragments or body parts were found for many ofthe dead, meaning identification will have to be carried out via DNA analysis.
Source: Qatar Tribune
