Sunday, 22 December 2024
Sunday, 22 December 2024
Incessant rains in Nepal have unleashed floods and landslides that killed at least 59 people and injured 36 others while 44 others are missing, officials said on Saturday. Nepal Police Deputy Spokesperson Bishwo Adhikari said that out of the 59 people killed in the Himalayan nation due to the continuous rainfall, 34 were killed in the Kathmandu valley.
Most rivers in the Himalayan nation have swollen, spilling over roads and bridges, authorities said, after nearly a week's delay in the retreat of South Asia's annual monsoon rains brought torrential downpours across the region.
International flights were operating but many domestic flights were disrupted, said Rinji Sherpa, a spokesperson for Kathmandu airport.
Police were working to clear debris and re-open roads to traffic after landslides blocked highways at 28 locations, police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki said.
The Koshi river in the southeast, which causes deadly floods in India's eastern neighbouring state of Bihar almost every year, was running above the danger level at 450,000 cusecs, versus the normal figure of 150,000 cusecs, one official said.
A cusec is a measurement of water flow equivalent to one cubic foot a second.
The earliest let-up in the rains might not come until Sunday, said Binu Maharjan, a weather forecasting official in the capital, Kathmandu, who blamed a low-pressure system over parts of neighbouring India for this year's extended rains.
The river level was still rising, added Ram Chandra Tiwari, the area's top bureaucrat.
"Heavy rains are likely to continue until Sunday morning and weather is likely to clear after that," Maharjan told Reuters.
Most central and eastern areas had received moderate to extremely heavy rains, ranging from 50 mm (2 inches) to more than 200 mm (8 inches), she added, with moderate levels elsewhere.
Roads and homes in the hill-ringed capital have been inundated after rivers overflowed with more than 200 mm (8 inches) of rain, authorities said.
Hundreds of people die in the monsoon season every year in the landslides and flash floods common in the mountainous nation.
