Nepal suspended search and rescue on Saturday due to bad weather and said it needs foreign technical help to cope with the devastating flood that tore through an area bordering Tibet. The impoverished Himalayan nation of 30 million people will also need about $4 billion to $5 billion to rebuild after the destruction caused by Wednesday's flood, Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle said.
Triggered by a glacier collapse, the huge torrent of rock, ice, mud and debris hurtled through mountain river systems on Wednesday, killing at least 626 people in Nepal and seven in China's Tibet as it swallowed buildings, bridges, and power stations in its path. Nearly 3,000 people are still missing - about 2,426 in Nepal and at least 558 in Tibet's Gyirong County - including at least 540 foreigners, many of them Hindu pilgrims from India.
"Search and rescue operations have been temporarily halted because it is raining and the weather is foggy," Narendra Pariyar, the top bureaucrat for the badly hit Rasuwa district, told Reuters. The focus is on arranging land transport to move rescued pilgrims to the capital city, Kathmandu, he said.
Authorities briefly suspended rescue operations on Friday as well when a lake, formed across the Nepal-China border after the flood, began overflowing into Nepal's Lhende Khola and Trishuli rivers. That lake is one of the two upstream of the flood zone that Nepal is monitoring. Flood risks will persist until both fully drain, an official warned.