KATHMANDU: Search and rescue teams in Nepal’s capital are combing through damaged buildings after torrential rains killed at least 192 people in the Himalayan nation. Deadly floods and earthquakes hit South Asia during the monsoon season from June to September, and experts believe climate change is contributing to the disaster. Entire communities in Kathmandu have been inundated by the heaviest rainfall in more than two decades, and the capital has been temporarily cut off from the rest of Nepal as landslides have blocked highways.
“Help those stranded on the highway,” Home Ministry spokesman Rishi Ram Tiwari told News Agency . “192 people have been reported dead and 31 missing,” he said. Nepal police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki also told news agencies that the latest 35 victims were buried alive on a highway south of Kathmandu. Meanwhile, rescuers wearing knee-high boots used shovels to clear mud from several illegal settlements around Kathmandu.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a Nepal-based think tank, said unplanned urban development around the Bagmati River, which runs through the city, had contributed to the disaster. The Nepalese army reported that more than 4,000 people had been rescued using helicopters, motor vehicles and rafts to help stranded families. Bulldozers were used to clear about two dozen rubble-clogged sections of the main highway to Kathmandu. Earlier this year, more than two cross-country roads on the main highway to Kathmandu were blocked by garbage.
