170 dead in Nepal floods after relentless monsoon rains

AFP | Kathmandu, Nepal

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Residents of Nepal's flood-hit capital returned to their mudcaked homes yesterday to survey the wreckage of devastating floods that have killed at least 170 people across the Himalayan republic. Deadly rain-related floods and landslides are common across South Asia during the monsoon season from June to September, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency and severity.

Entire neighbourhoods in Kathmandu were inundated over the weekend with flash floods reported in rivers coursing through the capital and extensive damage to highways connecting the city with the rest of Nepal. Kumar Tamang, who lives in a slum area by a riverbank, told AFP he and his family had to flee after midnight on Saturday as waters rushed into his shack.

"This morning we returned and everything looks different," the 40-year-old said. "We couldn't even open the doors to our house, it was jammed with mud," he added. "Yesterday we were afraid that the water would kill us, but today we have no water to clean." Nepal's Home Ministry said 170 people had been killed across the country with another 42 still missing.

Ministry spokesman Rishi Ram Tiwari told AFP that bulldozers were being used to clear several highways that had been blocked by debris, cutting Kathmandu off from the rest of the country. "More than 3,000 people have been rescued," he added. At least 35 of those killed were aboard three vehicles and were buried alive when earth from a landslide careened into a highway south of Kathmandu, Nepal Police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki told AFP.

The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology said preliminary data from stations in 14 districts measured record-breaking rain in the 24 hours to Saturday morning. A station at the Kathmandu airport recorded about 240 millimetres (9.4 inches) of rain, highest since 2002, it said. Local media had earlier suggested the rainfall was the highest since 1970.