Hundreds missing after devastating floods on China-Nepal border

**Ankur Desai** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
Hello, I'm Ankur Desai, and at 1400 GMT on Wednesday 26th August, these are our main stories. Hundreds are missing after a flash flood tears through villages around the Nepal-China border.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:19)
I saw around nine trucks and people being swept away by the floods. It's a heartbreaking incident. I've never seen anything like this here before.

**Ankur Desai** (0:28)
Nearly 300 of those out of contact are foreign tourists. At least 14 newborn babies are killed in a fire in a maternity ward of a hospital in Pakistan. China's Narcotics Commission warns a growing number of teenagers are misusing prescription drugs to cope with exam pressure.
Also in this podcast, Russia targets Ukrainian petrol stations along the front line. A new research suggests vaping may be a better way to quit smoking than using nicotine gum or patches.
It all came suddenly. We heard a loud sound like a volcano erupting. That's how one person from northern Nepal described the moment a flash flood ripped through his village. Hundreds of others had similar experiences.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:20)
I saw around nine trucks and people being swept away by the floods. It's a heartbreaking incident. I've been teaching here for 18 years and I've never seen anything like this here before.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:35)
My brother-in-law had a liquor store here. I got a call from him this morning and they were crying and said their entire house had been swept away.
Three family members were rescued, but his brother is still missing.

**Ankur Desai** (1:48)
Hundreds of people are missing, including around 300 foreign tourists who are out of contact. Police in Nepal say they anticipate what they described as huge scale loss of life with villages as well as roads, bridges and power stations swept away. The authorities say at least 31 people have been confirmed dead so far.
Rescue operations are underway on both sides of the border that Nepal shares with the Tibetan region of China. Azadeh Mashiri is our correspondent in the region.

**Azadeh Mashiri** (2:16)
The flood tore through homes. It damaged infrastructure early on Wednesday, but we likely won't know the true scale of the disaster, the true figure of the casualties for the next hours or even the coming days. Right now, we know that 17 people are confirmed to have died. That's according to Nepal's police. But especially when it comes to an area like this that is remote, it's in northern Nepal, in Rasua, which is near the border with Tibet. It's very hard to access. And so, information keeps coming out hour by hour, and the true casualty figures could be much higher. We know that at this point, they believe more than at least 10 hydropower stations have been damaged. Police have said that they're struggling to get in touch with dozens of their own police officers. And officials believe the cause is excessive snow melting into the Butikusi River, which flows from Tibet to Nepal. And so rescue operations are ongoing. And fortunately, Nepal is no stranger to deadly flooding. Last year, 18 people died because of a glacial outburst on the Chinese border. But again, officials are saying this time, they believe that the casualties could be much higher.

**Ankur Desai** (3:31)
And as of today, some of the footage that's emerging, we can see some devastating pictures and videos. And it truly is quite a shocking state of affairs there.

**Azadeh Mashiri** (3:41)
It is. And here at the BBC, we're continuing to verify a lot of the videos because there is a lot that's coming out on social media. Some of it is true, some of it needs to be verified. But of the ones that we have verified, you're seeing mudslide. These brown waters just engulf villages, sweep them away. And when we've spoken to some of the industry bodies, our Nepali service there has spoken to the president of the private electricity generation industry group there in Nepal. They have said that they're worried about all the workers they have operating in some of these hydropower plants, for example. There are lots of companies who transport a lot of goods through that area as well, trucks that are located, hundreds of trucks that are located and passed through that area.
People are still trying to get in touch with their workers there as well. So again, we're trying to piece together as much information as we can. But when you look at those pictures that you're referring to, that's why people are so worried.

**Ankur Desai** (4:41)
Azhadeh Mishiri, our Environment Correspondent Navin Singh Khadka told me more about the possible causes of the disaster.

**Navin Singh Khadka** (4:47)