'Their whole village has disappeared': families search for missing in Kathmandu hospital

Four days after flash floods and mudslides tore through the Himalayan region, families are still searching for word of missing relatives. By Saturday morning, the combined number of missing in Nepal and Tibet had climbed to nearly 3,000. Nepal has recovered 669 bodies so far, but many remote areas remain accessible only by army helicopter, as roads have been cut off or destroyed. Rescuers say it remains impossible to know how many more people may be buried under the mud.

Identifying the dead has become an enormous task. In Chitwan, morgues have been overwhelmed, forcing authorities to set up a makeshift building to hold bodies. Some victims were carried so far by the floodwaters that they were recovered across the border in India.

At Tribhuvan University teaching hospital in Kathmandu, desperate relatives gather daily hoping for news, registering the names of missing family members with police and scanning lists of the injured for signs their loved ones are alive. With affected areas largely cut off from communication, many families have turned to posters bearing photographs, appealing for any information.

One man described how his sister, her husband and their two children went missing after floods completely destroyed their village in Rasuwa district, leaving him with little hope any of them survived. Another woman, whose husband worked as a driver near the Tibet border, said she has not given up believing he will return, even though his phone has been switched off since the disaster struck.

At least 900 of the missing were working on major hydropower projects along the Trishuli River, high in the mountains, which were badly damaged by the floods and landslides, including at least 63 workers from India. On Friday, soldiers pulled several survivors from a mud-filled tunnel at the Trishuli-1 hydropower project, though the army believes around 100 people may still be trapped in the tunnels there, with dozens more trapped at the Trishuli-3 plant.