Nepal Toll Passes 600 as Kathmandu Accepts Foreign Help
The flood death toll passed 600 — 633 by the latest counts, with nearly 3,000 missing — as Nepal reversed its refusal of foreign rescue teams, requesting specialist help “to fill gaps”; Indian and Chinese teams are expected today, and a British crisis-response team is due in Kathmandu following the UK’s £5m pledge. Rescue operations resumed around the unstable barrier lake, which experts now hope will drain naturally. Thirty-three Britons remain missing.
The U-turn on foreign help is quiet vindication for everyone who bit their tongue on Thursday: national pride and coordination fears are real considerations, but a toll trebling in three days makes its own argument, and the specialist capabilities arriving — tunnel rescue, swift-water teams — are precisely the gaps Nepal named. The missing count near three thousand is the number to watch with dread and hope in equal measure; registers inflate in chaos and deflate as survivors surface, and a 97-year-old woman pulled alive from the mud yesterday is the argument for continuing. For the British families now in Kathmandu, the crisis team’s arrival at least gives grief a place to queue. Watch the lake’s drainage — Tuesday remains the forecast peak.