Floods kill almost 400 people in Nepal; 65 U.S. nationals are still missing.
By Catholics for Catholics
An annihilating flood in the Nepal-Tibet border has provoked a death toll close to 400, as 65 U.S. nationals are among the 1,400 people who are missing.
The Nepal Police reported at least 360 people dead and more than 1,400 missing in Nepal and Tibet, an autonomous region of China, according to a story by NPR.
The U.S. State Department said as of Thursday morning, it was not aware of any confirmed deaths of U.S. citizens.
Still, the U.S. Geological Survey says a glacial collapse triggered the floods, after at first reporting the event as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake.
Surveillance footage from the Tibetan side of the border shows a huge wall of mud and debris crashing over buildings and engulfing roads as people desperately try to flee the torrent.
Describing with horror, locals said great waves of water barreled down valleys, burying people and homes under the mud. Santa Tamang, a 25-year-old university student who lives in one river valley, spoke to NPR by phone.
98 people have been confirmed dead after catastrophic flash floods crashed through the China-Nepal border.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 26, 2026
– 47 Americans missing (NYP)
– 391 tourists missing.
– Flood may have been caused by a massive chunk of ice snapping off a glacier.
– "A chunk of ice with a width of… pic.twitter.com/622Gg0TGIO
Tamang said her family was able to rush to higher ground, carrying her elderly grandmother with them, but their home was washed away. “Everything is gone. My childhood, my family, my community,” Tamang said.
Nepal is a popular tourist destination, and many of those missing are foreign nationals — more than 600, according to the figures from the Nepal Tourism Board, although figures vary. In addition to the Americans, Nepal said people from India, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada were among the missing.
Lila Pieters Yahia, the United Nations’ resident coordinator in Nepal, says the floods wiped out 35 bridges and extinguished about 25 miles of roads in Nepal. That’s making humanitarian efforts all the more complicated. She says the Nepalese government is deploying temporary bridges and the U.N. is trying to help with that.
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