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Nepali families were 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, as nearly 4,500 people remain missing after the gigantic wave of freezing water, rocks and debris triggered by a high-altitude glacial collapse roared down the China-Nepal border on 26 August, causing grave damage to much of what was in its path.
After days of searching shelters and mortuaries, relatives of some of the missing lost hope and began 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.
He had been en route to China when the disaster struck. “I saw the news and called him,” she said. “I called repeatedly, but he never picked up.”
A week after the colossal disaster, Nepali rescuers remained 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 were still digging, drilling and blasting through debris in the hopes of reaching any potential survivors.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said he still hoped some of the thousands of people still reported missing could be alive.
“Miracles do happen,” he said in an interview. “At this point, I do not want to completely give up hope.”
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 wrote 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 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 strained, with limited resources to respond to a disaster of this scale.
With mortuaries overflowing in Nepal, authorities have had to bury hundreds of unidentified bodies after DNA sampling in mass graves, sparking major uproar from the country’s largely Hindu community, who accused the government of ignoring religious burial rites.
The total number of confirmed deaths as of Tuesday evening sat at 1,066 – with 1,050 reported in Nepal and 16 in China. The latest figures also show 4,462 people still missing, 3,916 belonging to Nepal with 546 in China.
Additional sources • AFP