The death toll from devastating Himalayan glacial floods crossed the grim 1,000 mark yesterday, as Chinese and Nepali teams searched for survivors including dozens feared trapped in hydropower tunnels.
Nearly 4,500 people are missing after the gigantic wave of freezing water, rocks and debris triggered by a high-altitude glacial collapse roared downstream last week on Wednesday, wiping out entire settlements and carving a path of destruction across Nepal.
Nepali rescue teams are digging, drilling and blasting through debris in a desperate race against time to free around 100 hydropower workers believed trapped in multiple tunnels.
So far, rescuers have recovered only bodies from tunnels blocked by sludge, and hopes of finding survivors are fading.
Excavators worked into the night yesterday, but an army update noted that "a large amount of water started flowing" into a hole they were digging, forcing them to start a new opening.
Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah has called the catastrophe "unimaginable and heartbreaking".
With mortuaries overflowing in Nepal, authorities have begun burying hundreds of unidentified bodies after DNA sampling.
At least 17 bodies have also been pulled from rivers downstream in India.
Police, using a drone to search for survivors, said on Tuesday that they had located 24 corpses inside a single house in Nuwakot district.
Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said he still hoped some of the thousands missing could be alive.
"Miracles do happen," he told AFP in an interview. "At this point, I do not want to completely give up hope."
In the capital Kathmandu, crowds lined up to search for their missing relatives.
Debu Sapkota, a 58-year-old driver, posted photos of his 83-year-old mother-in-law and her granddaughter, alongside dozens of others.
Sapkota said he had little hope they survived after witnesses saw them being carried away by the torrent.
"I am here hoping to find their bodies," he said
Some, believing they will never find their missing relatives, held symbolic funerals in accordance with Nepali Hindu customs.
"We searched everywhere, went to morgues across the country, but could not find his body," said Jeevan Shrestha, as his 12-year-old nephew set fire to a tiny straw effigy representing his missing father.
Aid needs are enormous. Entire communities have been swept away, leaving families homeless and using makeshift shelters as heavy rain lashes down.
Roads and dozens of bridges have been smashed, and power plants destroyed.
"There are too many challenges," said police officer E. Hawadi in badly affected Nuwakot district.
AFP photographers in Nuwakot yesterday saw people scouring through mud for usable items and stringing up plastic sheeting for shelter in ruins.
Foreigners missing among the list include 583 in Nepal and 261 in China, coming from more than 30 nations.
They include tourists who had come for trekking in the Himalayas, as well as Hindu pilgrims seeking spiritual peace at Tibet's sacred Mount Kailash.
Nepal's economy is already under pressure, with limited resources to respond to a disaster of this scale.
Kathmandu has warned reconstruction costs could run into the "billions of dollars".
There is growing anger at the scale of destruction to hit Nepal, a largely rural nation of 30 mn people.
The country has contributed little to the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming, but is among those suffering its consequences.
Khanal, the foreign minister, told AFP that the "disaster should be seen as a warning signal to the risk that climate change poses to Nepal", adding that support should be seen "from a perspective of climate justice".
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 mn people in the mountainous regions, as well as for another 1.65 bn people in the South Asian and Southeast Asian river valleys below.
"It impacts the entirety of the Himalayan region's civilisation," Khanal said.
Nepal said 1,050 bodies had been recovered by yesterday, while 3,916 people remained missing.
China's state media reported 16 dead and 546 missing.
That takes the overall number of reported dead to 1,066 and missing to 4,462.
In China, Tibet is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists, and Chinese authorities are the only source of official information.
More than 2,000 people are aiding rescue operations, including soldiers, Xinhua added.
It said on Tuesday that teams were "working around the clock to search for survivors, repair roads, set up communication base stations and restore power lines".
Tibetan advocacy groups in exile have questioned China's account of the disaster, but Beijing insists that the "release of information has been open, transparent and timely".