Nepali families are holding symbolic funeral ceremonies to 'liberate the souls' of loved ones missing since deadly flash floods swept away their villages and homes in the Himalayan region a week ago. Emergency teams have recovered more than 1,000 bodies, and nearly 4,500 people remain missing after the disaster triggered by a high-altitude glacial collapse on August 26. After days of searching shelters and mortuaries, relatives of some of the missing have lost hope and begun conducting last rites. 'We had to do this to set his soul free, so that he is at peace and happy wherever he is,' said Dolma Newar Tamang, flanked by her sobbing son, at a funeral for her husband, who had been en route to China when the disaster struck.
Nepal's Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said he still hopes some of the thousands missing could be alive. 'Miracles do happen,' he told AFP in an interview. 'At this point, I do not want to completely give up hope.' Rescuers remain hopeful about finding survivors, particularly in multiple tunnels of hydropower plants across the region. So far, rescuers have recovered only bodies from tunnels blocked by sludge, but teams continue to dig, drill, and blast through debris in the hopes of reaching survivors.
Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah said the catastrophe was 'a serious indication that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing alongside climate change.' 'Climate change is a global contribution, and disaster response is also a global responsibility,' he added in a post on Facebook. Scientists say the Himalayas, the world's highest mountain range, are warming rapidly as global temperatures rise, accelerating glacier melt. Glaciers in the wider Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges are a crucial water source for around 240 million people in the mountainous regions, as well as for another 1.65 billion people in the South Asian and Southeast Asian river valleys below.
There is growing anger at the scale of destruction to hit Nepal, a largely rural nation of 30 million people. The country has contributed little to the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming, but is among those suffering its consequences. Kathmandu has warned reconstruction costs could run into the 'billions of dollars.' Nepal's economy is already under pressure, with limited resources to respond to a disaster of this scale.
In an illustration of the scale of destruction, Chinese state media said road access to hard-hit Gyirong Port in Tibet had only finally been restored on Wednesday after 'days of round-the-clock repair work.' With mortuaries overflowing in Nepal, authorities have had to bury hundreds of unidentified bodies after DNA sampling. Nepal said 1,050 bodies had been recovered by Tuesday, while 3,916 people remained missing. China's state media reported 16 dead and 546 missing. That takes the overall number of reported dead to 1,066 and missing to 4,462. At least 17 bodies have also been pulled from rivers downstream in India.
In China, foreign journalists are restricted from reporting in Tibet, and Chinese authorities have a tight grip on information sources on the region. Tibetan advocacy groups in exile have questioned China's account of the disaster, but Beijing insists that the 'release of information has been open, transparent and timely.' The disaster highlights the vulnerability of Himalayan nations to climate change, a concern that resonates with Bangladesh, which faces similar risks from rising sea levels and erratic weather patterns.
