The death toll in Nepal from devastating flash floods in the border region with China has risen to at least 469, police said, quoted by DPA and Agence France-Presse, BTA reported.
Nepalese police said 1,545 people had been rescued, many of them injured. The three deaths, also reported from China, bring the confirmed death toll from the disaster to 472. More than 1,400 people are still missing.
Police spokesman Abi Narayan Kafle said authorities still had no clear idea of the number of missing and that it could be several days before the full extent of the disaster became known.
Dozens of bodies had yet to be identified, police said, partly because the force of the rising waters, mud and debris had disfigured many of the victims or torn their bodies apart.
Nepalese rescuers were trying to evacuate more than a hundred workers trapped in a tunnel at a hydroelectric power plant after Wednesday's flood, which killed at least 472 people, the army said.
“We have received information that people are trapped in a tunnel“ at the Trishuli dam construction site, army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said.
“Two helicopters have been sent to the site, but it remains very difficult to find the tunnel entrances,“ he added.
The Nepali prime minister's office said 350 workers and residents from the area had already been evacuated by the army “in very risky conditions, complicated by the weather and flooding“. “The army is still working to try to evacuate more than a hundred other people who remain trapped in a tunnel,“ they added.
Several dams are being built in the area.
According to the US Geological Survey, the wave was caused by the collapse of part of a glacier, so powerful that it registered as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake and triggered numerous landslides.
The flood has caused huge damage that is yet to be assessed, including to hydropower infrastructure in Nepal.