Archived event
Toll passes 389 as China warns lake may burst within days
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It was published at 27 August 2026, 10:30 pm NPT and is kept online as the record of what was confirmed at that hour. Figures in it are no longer current.
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Nepal Police put the confirmed toll at 389 dead as of a 9pm bulletin on Thursday, up from 359 at 5pm. Police also said 466 people are injured. The flood hit Timure in Rasuwa on Wednesday morning and ran down the Bhote Koshi into the Trishuli and the Narayani.
Chitwan has the most dead, 137, followed by Nawalparasi East with 87, Dhading with 33 and Gorkha with 32, Nepal Police figures reported by Review Nepal show. Health facilities in Chitwan can hold only around 50 bodies, which is slowing the process of identifying and releasing them to families.
Nepal's tourism board says 644 travellers, 517 of them foreign nationals, were reported missing in a situation update issued at noon on Thursday, up from an earlier police count of 579. India has the most missing at 178, followed by 65 Americans and 53 Ukrainians, the tourism board says. Out of contact does not mean dead. Phone lines, power and internet are down across the valley and are coming back slowly.
China's Ministry of Water Resources says a new barrier lake near the Chhochen Khola and Purepu Tsangpo, close to the Nepal border, is already overflowing and holds about 2 million cubic metres of water. It expects another 3 million cubic metres to flow in over the next three days, putting the lake at high risk of breaching in that time. This is separate from the smaller lake NDRRMA found earlier on the Lhende river.
USGS first read the shaking on Wednesday as an earthquake. It later found no earthquake took place. The signal came from an ice and rock avalanche that fell into the Lhende Khola on the Tibet side, dammed the river, then broke.
Nepal's Army says more than 5,000 army and police personnel are working the flood zone, from Nuwakot to Chitwan. Prime Minister Balendra Shah travelled to Bidur in Nuwakot on Thursday to see the damage.
In India, the NDRF and the Sashastra Seema Bal have rescue teams on standby in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and the NDRF says the Gandak, which the Narayani becomes downstream, could see higher water levels. Nepal has turned down offers of search and rescue teams from India, China, the US, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the Kathmandu Post reports. The government says its own army and police can handle the operation and is asking instead for cash, through a single channel into the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund.
Keep off the banks of the Bhote Koshi, the Trishuli and the Narayani until officials say it is clear.