Devastating flash floods and landslides that hit the remote Nepal-Tibet border region have left a massive trail of destruction, with updated official figures released Friday showing the number of people unaccounted for has surged dramatically to more than 2,400, and at least 584 lives have been confirmed lost. Disaster response officials warn that these casualty numbers are expected to shift further in the coming days, a common scenario in the chaotic aftermath of large-scale natural disasters when search and rescue operations are still ongoing.
Breaking down the latest data from authorities on both sides of the border, Nepal’s national disaster management agency raised its count of missing people on Nepal’s side of the border to 1,924 on Friday. The previous day, Chinese authorities reported 558 people missing on the Tibet side of the border, and no updated figures were released by Beijing on Friday. Combining the two sets of data brings the confirmed total of missing people across the entire affected border region to at least 2,482, representing an increase of more than 1,000 in just 24 hours.
A large share of the missing are foreign nationals, including international tourists and cross-border workers. On Friday, Nepal’s disaster agency recorded 517 foreigners still unaccounted for on its territory. Adding the 260 foreigners reported missing by Chinese officials on the Tibet side on Thursday, the total number of foreign missing across the region reaches at least 777.
Nepal’s national tourism board released separate tracking data on Friday, which puts the number of tourists of all nationalities out of contact at 622, 473 of whom are international visitors. The board also confirmed that 121 tourists stranded by the disaster have already been pulled to safety, though a full unified count of all rescued people, including local residents and foreign workers, has not yet been released to the public.
Across the entire affected area, the confirmed death toll now stands at 584: 579 fatalities recorded by Nepali authorities, and five reported by China.
On Nepal’s side of the border, the tourism board counts 149 Nepali tourists among the 622 unaccounted for, though the national disaster agency lists a lower figure of 127. As of Friday, the full number of local non-tourist residents still missing across Nepal’s affected districts remains unclear, but informal estimates from officials suggest the figure runs into the hundreds.
Multiple countries have now confirmed that their citizens are among the missing. China’s foreign ministry confirmed Thursday that nearly 100 Chinese nationals are unaccounted for in Nepal; Nepal’s tourism board separately reports eight Chinese missing, with 16 already rescued. These numbers do not include the 558 people missing on the Chinese side of the border.
India has 98 citizens missing in Nepal, with 85 already rescued, according to Nepal’s latest tourism board data. U.S. officials reported Thursday that 90 American citizens were missing, with three rescued and no confirmed U.S. fatalities; Nepal’s tourism board now puts the number of U.S. missing at 65, with two rescued.
Ukraine has 61 citizens missing in Nepal per Friday’s Nepali data, though Ukraine’s foreign ministry pegged the number at 56 as of Thursday evening. Other countries with large numbers of citizens unaccounted for include Malaysia (51), Australia (39 per Australian officials, 35 per Nepali data), the United Kingdom (33), Latvia (29), and Canada (25 per Nepal, 30 across both Nepal and Tibet per Canadian officials). Nine South Koreans, nine Singaporeans, nine Russians, eight Germans and smaller groups from dozens of other nations are also missing, with multiple countries reporting that a small number of their citizens have already been rescued.
Not all missing foreign nationals have had their nationalities publicly broken down: the 260 foreigners missing on the Chinese side of the border have not been sorted by nationality, and the nationalities of non-tourist missing people in Nepal also have not been released publicly. Search and rescue operations are continuing across the hard-hit border region, with teams working to reach remote cut-off areas to locate survivors and recover bodies.