MEA cautions against relying on changing casualty figuresAt Upper Trishuli-1, around 300 workers were believed to have been trapped inside the tunnel, of whom 254 had been rescued, while search operations continued for the remaining workers. At Upper Trishuli-3B, 91 of the 122 workers earlier reported missing had been rescued and 31 remained unaccounted for, showing how the rescue effort had expanded far beyond the 100-odd workers initially feared trapped at a handful of sites.

Nearly 20,000 security personnel had been deployed, while ground and aerial teams continued searches along riverbanks, destroyed settlements and mud-filled tunnels. Nepal foreign secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai said, “Our immediate national priority remains clear: to save lives, locate missing persons, rescue them, provide urgent relief to survivors, and ensure that affected Nepalese as well as foreign nationals receive appropriate assistance and support.”

As number of the dead and missing kept changing, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal cautioned: “We are in a dynamic situation, so figures keep going up and down. Also, we have to reconcile several lists that we are dealing with.”

Among the lists of “foreign nationals”, the count of people of Indian origin is likely to be high. Many travellers formally counted as American, British, Australian, Canadian and other nationals were people of Indian origin travelling on foreign passports, several of them on or returning from Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage.

In one 77-member group caught in the disaster, 53 were people of Indian origin carrying foreign passports. The Indian picture on the Tibet side was also being counted separately.

Chinese authorities said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were among the 546 missing in Gyirong, including 49 Indians, 104 Nepalese, 33 Latvians, 18 Americans, 15 Britons, six Canadians and six Australians. It remained unclear whether the 49 Indians listed in Tibet were already part of MEA’s broader count of 275 missing Indian citizens.

Large numbers of Indian pilgrims and travellers stranded on the China side had meanwhile begun moving out. MEA said earlier Sunday that 598 Indians had crossed safely from China into Nepal over two days, while around 900 Indians who remained on the Chinese side were “safe and contactable”.

Indian missions in Beijing and Kathmandu remained in touch with Chinese and Nepalese authorities. India intensified its technical assistance.

5 tonnes of supplies to Kathmandu, while a 13-member Indian Army tunnel-rescue team with specialist equipment and six forensic teams comprising 19 personnel were sent to assist Nepalese authorities. Sixteen trucks carrying equipment for a 230-foot single-lane modular steel bridge had reached Nepal and equipment for seven more Bailey bridges was being supplied.

Skip to main contentThe new OSS Scanner service offers vulnerability reports from Anthropic’s “strongest models,” including Mythos. The new OSS Scanner service...