In brief
As Nepal’s Trishuli River swells after a glacier‑breach flood, rescuers are blasting hillside to reach more than 600 workers trapped underground. Families anxiously wait as the rescue team pumps air into tunnels, hoping to find anyone still alive. A multinational effort, led by Chinese and Nepalese forces with help from India, Korea and Australia, is racing against time to bring survivors out. The floods have caused 939 deaths and left nearly 4,000 missing, prompting the government to call the operation “intensified”. While families pray for survival, officials highlight the extraordinary scale of the underground search and the hopes that the environment protected some from the water above.
Families of more than 600 workers in Nepal’s Trishuli River region are holding on to hope. Rescue teams have been blasting the hillside harder and pumping air into massive mud‑filled tunnels to find the missing.
Using explosives to break open rock has become the only way to reach the Trishuli‑3A plant where workers are believed to be trapped. The engineers and military personnel from China, Nepal, India, Korea and Australia are working around the clock, trying to get a foothold in the stone before the window closes.
A Nepalese army medevac is racing through the cratered landscape while a team of Tibetan engineers remotely guides them with drones. Every second counts: the longer the rescue takes, the slimmer the chance of alive survivors.
The government’s latest figures say 939 people have died and 3,925 are missing, of which 592 are foreigners. The largest groups still missing are hydropower plant workers, proving these sites are a critical focus.
In Chitwan, half‑a‑mile downstream, morgues have been buried tiny coffins for unidentified bodies that floodwaters have washed out of tunnels. Authorities say the ditch is temporary until DNA testing can confirm who the bodies belong to.
