Rescue teams rushed Thursday to find more than 1,300 people missing on the Nepal-Tibet border in flash floods and landslides that killed at least 165 and swept away entire villages. A terrifying clip of surveillance video from the Chinese side of the frontier shows a massive wall of mud and debris crashing over a building several stories high on Wednesday morning, engulfing it as dozens of people ran for their lives below. The surge swept away buses and cars like they were toys.

Many of the missing are foreign tourists, officials said of the disaster, which the US Geological Survey believes was caused by a glacial collapse that sent a flow of debris engulfing areas along the way. The tsunami-like rumble of water and mud struck villages and towns on the path of two rivers Bhote Koshi and Trishuli, with Nepali police saying they had recovered 162 bodies. Another 823 people, including 579 Nepali and foreign tourists, remained out of contact in Nepal, according to the country’s disaster agency.

Across the border, Chinese state media said the “mudslide disaster” at the Gyirong Port in Tibet claimed three lives while 558 people, including 260 foreigners, were still missing. “This will go up, as we have resumed the search and more bodies are expected to be recovered,” police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told. Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah left by road for Bidur in one of the worst-affected districts of Nuwakot to assess the flood situation, his office said on social media.

Raju Bhadel, 56, a businessman in Nuwakot, recounted receiving a call from his brother-in-law in distress. “They were crying and said their entire house had been swept away. Three family members were rescued, but his brother is still missing,” he said. Also at Nuwakot, teacher Manok Mishra witnessed “nine trucks being swept away by the floods including people”.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)