Nepal Deaths Pass 750 as Army Drills for Trapped Workers
Nepal’s flood toll passed 750, with some 2,500 still missing on the Nepalese side alone, as army teams began drilling into the mud-filled tunnels of the Trishuli hydropower project — officials believe more than a hundred workers may still be alive inside. The finance ministry put losses above $4bn. Some 261 foreigners from 23 countries remain unaccounted for, including around a hundred Americans; thirty-three Britons are still missing.
The tunnel drilling is the disaster’s one thread of active hope: unlike the valleys, where the search is now recovery, the hydropower tunnels are sealed spaces where air pockets and days of survival are genuinely possible, and the machinery arriving — hydraulic cutters, directional drills — is the specialist capability Nepal swallowed its pride to request. The $4bn loss estimate, against a state budget it dwarfs, explains why reconstruction will be an international project whether Kathmandu wishes it or not. Monsoon weather and forty broken bridges still throttle the aid corridors. For the British families, day six brings the arithmetic nobody says aloud. Watch the tunnels above all — a single rescue would change the story the country is telling itself.