Nepal's armed forces and police teams on Friday were racing against time to rescue 100 people trapped in a tunnel for almost two days after catastrophic flash floods near the Tibet border caused widespread destruction.
The military dispatched helicopters to the Trishuli 3A hydropower project in Rasuwa district to reach the workers trapped inside the tunnel.
“Our focus is on search and rescue of people … some people are trapped in the tunnel of Trishuli 3A hydropower project,” Nepal Army spokesperson, Raja Ram Basnet, told AFP.
He said two helicopters have been dispatched but it was "tough to even locate the entry points of the tunnel".
"Relief efforts are also under way to provide the rescued people with what they need,” he added.
Prime minister Balendra Shah's office said some 350 workers and locals have been brought to safety from the tunnel and efforts were underway to rescue 100 others.
Rescuers pulled out survivors caked in dark brown mud and helicopters lifted stranded people to the safety of a base camp from the worst-affected areas.
Wednesday's flood, caused by a glacier collapse, killed 538 people in Nepal and five in China's Tibet, with almost 1,000 more missing in the two countries.
A huge torrent of rock, ice, mud and debris cascaded through Himalayan mountain river systems after the collapse, and also led to the formation of a lake where water continued to collect and rise.
Rescue workers were battling against the threat of a second flash flood, as vast debris piles damming the valley threatened to unleash a sudden surge of trapped water. Teams that earlier had access to the area were ordered to withdraw at 1km, according to reports.
On Friday, the lake's reservoir had topped 2.5m cubic metres of water, up from the estimated 1.5-2m cubic metres recorded a day earlier, before overflowing into the Bhotekoshi River, authorities and witnesses in Nepal said.
“We have received a notice saying that the lake has broken its banks," Narendra Pariyar, the most senior bureaucrat in Nepal's flood-hit Rasuwa district, told Reuters.
"But we do not know how big it is and how high its water level is. We can see that the level of water in the river is rising.”
People ran to higher ground carrying belongings as announcements were made warning them to stay away from the river, and police personnel remained on standby with ropes and stretchers. Authorities in Nepal stopped rescue operations for 90 minutes but resumed later, an army officer said.
Labourers rescued from dam projects along the Trishuli River valley claimed that the number of people who died was higher than those rescued.
Tamang, one of the rescued labourers, told AFP that he survived because he was working inside a tunnel at the dam when the flood came.
"All the senior managers working on the other side were swept away by the flood," he added.
