Nepal: Death toll rises to 70 after floods, landslides

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Updated 14 Aug 2017, 6:27pm

A Nepalese man walks through knee-high floodwaters.

PHOTO: The flooding mainly affected Nepal’s southern plains. (AP: Manish Paudel)RELATED STORY: Floods kill more than 50 in India

Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy rain have killed at least 70 people in southern Nepal and left thousands homeless, officials say.

Relief workers said 26 of the country’s 75 districts were either submerged or had been hit by landslides after heavy rains lashed the Himalayan nation.

The death toll was expected to rise with another 50 people reported missing, Information and Communications Minister Mohan Bahadur Basnet said.

Mr Basnet said more than 60,000 homes were under water, mainly in the southern plains bordering India.

Estimates of losses were not available, with rescuers yet to reach villages marooned by the worst floods in recent years.

“The situation is worrying as tens of thousands of people have been hit,” Mr Basnet told Reuters.

Large swaths of farmland in the southern plains, Nepal’s breadbasket, are under water and the country could face food shortages due to crop losses, aid workers said.

“The heavy rains hit at one of the worst times, shortly after farmers planted their rice crop in the country’s most important agricultural region,” said Sumnima Shrestha, a spokeswoman for US-based non-profit group Heifer International.

PHOTO: Large swaths of farmland in Nepal’s breadbasket are under water. (AP: Niranjan Shrestha)

The Red Cross estimated 100,000 people were affected by the disaster, with one official describing how the storm had cut off communication and electricity, adding to the challenges in rescuing people and distributing aid.

Monsoon rains, which start in June and continue through September, are important for farm-dependent Nepal, but they also cause heavy loss of life and property damage each year.

Elephants used to rescue stranded tourists

Nepalese men carry children on their shoulders in flood waters. The water is just above knee height.

PHOTO: The Red Cross estimated 100,000 people were affected by the disaster. (AP: Manish Paudel)

Officials said elephants were used to help rescue hundreds of tourists from a flooded jungle safari park.

Sauraha, on the fringe of Chitwan National Park, is home to 605 rhinoceroses and is popular with foreign tourists, including Indian and Chinese visitors.

The rains caused the Rapti River to overflow its banks in Sauraha, inundating hotels and restaurants and leaving some 600 tourists stranded.

“Some 300 guests were rescued on elephant backs and tractor trailers to [nearby] Bharatpur yesterday and the rest will be taken to safer places today,” Suman Ghimire, head of a group of Sauraha hotel owners said.

Floods have also swept the nearby north-east Indian state of Assam state in the past two days, killing at least 15 people and displacing nearly 2.3 million, officials said.

Nearly 90 per cent of Assam’s Kaziranga national park, home to the world’s largest population of the endangered one-horned rhinoceros, was under water.

The animals have moved to higher ground, officials said.