Death toll rises in Nepal-China border disaster as lake pose…

Gaire doesn’t remember exactly how many people were in the office when the disaster struck, but his 15 colleagues have gone missing. “It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don’t call it a flood, it was a tsunami.”

He described Timure as a vibrant place filled with government offices, hotels, cafes, banks, primary schools, tea shops and residential buildings, where more than 1,500 people were living.

Families around the world hear the news of missing loved ones

Rajan Tamang, a restaurant owner in New York City, said he learned from family in Kathmandu that his mother and sister were among those who died, while many other relatives and friends remained missing.

“My family was just waking up, and they didn’t even get any information, and suddenly this flood came. Some of them are missing, some of them lost their life and only a few is alive,” he told The Associated Press after a vigil in New York.

Vishnuram Ramaswamy works at a private company in the southern Indian city of Puducherry and said that he last spoke to his mother and two sisters who were on pilgrimage to Mount Kailash on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m.

“My mother said they were on their way towards the border area and said they’ll reach their hotel and call us,” he said. “This was the last we spoke to them. They have been unreachable since.”

Ramaswamy said he’s in constant contact with Nepal and Indian government officials as well as the travel agencies who arranged his family’s trip but has not received any updates about their whereabouts so far.

“This was the first time they had gone on this pilgrimage and it was something my mother always wanted to do,” he said.

Some of the missing may have been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others.

Seventy-seven people from one pilgrimage group were caught in the floods at the immigration office at the border, according to a post on X from Indian spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev, also known as Sadhguru.

Nepal’s tourism board has said that among the missing are more than 500 foreigners.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the flooding was terrible to see, describing how “strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said the U.S. spoke with Nepalese leaders and offered to provide “anything they want.”

Scientists who’ve studied satellite images said bedrock underneath a glacier high in the Himalayan region had collapsed, taking part of the glacier with it. The rocks and melted water swelled the rivers in the valleys below, causing a torrent of water that swept buildings, bridges and earth downstream.

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Associated Press journalists Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India; Upendra Mansingh in Nuwakot District, Nepal; Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar, India; Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia; Ali Swenson and Edith Lederer in New York; Matthew Lee, Collin Binkley and Fu Ting in Washington, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Utah contributed to this report.