CHINA said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries remained missing on the Tibetan side of a border crossing with Nepal on Sunday after a massive mudslide swept through the Himalayan region, as authorities warned of further flooding.
Officials in China's Tibet Autonomous Region said the largest number of missing foreigners were Nepalese, with 104 unaccounted for, followed by 49 Indians, 33 Latvians, 18 Americans and 15 Britons.
They said authorities in Beijing had notified the relevant foreign missions.
Reuters cited the nationality breakdown was the first released by China since a glacier collapse on Wednesday unleashed torrents of ice, rock, mud and debris into rivers across the Himalayan region.
Chinese authorities said 16 people had died in Gyirong County as of Saturday evening, while another 546 people remained missing.
On the Nepalese side, the disaster authority reported at least 675 deaths, 2,498 people missing and 7,514 rescued.
The situation remained precarious on Sunday, with local police telling Reuters that residents and rescue workers had moved to higher ground after the water level in the nearby Trishuli River rose over several hours.
The development underscored the continuing threat of further flooding even as rescue operations pressed ahead.
China has linked the disaster to climate change, with state broadcaster CCTV reporting that scientists had attributed the disaster to glacier instability caused by the long-term effects of global warming.
CCTV described the incident as a "new and prominent feature of cryosphere disasters" on the Tibetan Plateau.
It reported that the mudslide took only six to seven minutes to travel from the Nepalese side to the Gyirong border crossing.
Surveillance footage showed torrents of water and debris engulfing buildings as people scrambled to escape.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Nepalese counterpart during a telephone call on Saturday that the disaster was the countries' "most severe cross-border disaster" in recent years.
He said rescue operations were facing unprecedented difficulty and complexity.
China has mobilised more than 2,100 emergency rescue workers and allocated at least 220 million yuan (US$32.7 million) for relief efforts.
It is also providing emergency cash assistance, relief supplies, satellite and hydrological data, as well as tunnel rescue specialists to Nepal, CCTV reported.
The two countries are working together to identify missing citizens and foreign nationals while strengthening cooperation on disaster prevention and mitigation and climate-change response.
The Red Cross estimated that more than 90,000 people were likely to have been affected by the disaster. - August 30, 2026
