Agencies/Kathmandu

At least 119 people have died in the latest landslides and flooding caused by monsoon rains, the Nepalese government said yesterday.

In the south-western plains of Nepal at least 133 people were reported missing and scores were injured, the home ministry said.

The government figures said more than 20,000 families had been displaced, with their houses either destroyed or damaged.

Following opposition threats to disrupt parliament, the government announced that it would form a task force to speed up relief. On Wednesday, the government also announced it would distribute 100,000 rupees ($1,020) in relief to every affected family.

The decision came after flood victims in the south-western town of Nepalganj picketed the local government offices, saying they were starving and falling sick from drinking contaminated water.

The opposition Unified Maoist party said it was dispatching its lawmakers to the flood-hit districts to help with the distribution of relief material.

Forty-seven people were rescued from a boat that capsized in central Nepal on Thursday, police said. Three women were missing and feared dead. 

Fifty were aboard when the boat capsized in the Bagmati river in Rautahat district. They were returning from the fields after work. 

District police said they rescued the passengers with the help of locals. They said inner tubes were thrown out as buoys to aid in the recovery.

Survivors said the boat overturned as the water level rose suddenly due to rain.

A US tourist died yesterday while trying to cross a swollen river in Nepal, the latest victim of floods and landslides feared to have killed more than 250 people, an official said.

The 81-year-old American man was found dead on the banks of the Paruwa river in western Nepal, where floods triggered by torrential rains last week wrecked bridges and other infrastructure, said local government official Krishna Prasad Acharya.

“The bridge on the river was destroyed by flooding a few days ago... it is a dangerous river to cross on foot and it looks like he either slipped or was swept away by the current,” Acharya told AFP.

Police have opened an investigation into his death and are trying to contact his family in the US, he added.

The man, who arrived in Nepal last May, had boarded a bus from Kathmandu bound for the far-western district of Kailali, and had stopped enroute in flood-hit Banke district, according to police.

At least 120 people have lost their lives in multiple landslides and flooding since late last week, with rescuers searching for 133 people still missing, feared dead.

The deaths come just weeks after Nepal’s worst landslide in more than a decade smashed into hamlets in the hilly northeast and killed 156 people.

Hundreds die every year in floods and mudslides during the monsoon season in South Asia.

 

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