Dozens of British tourists including girl, 13, missing in Nepal flood

In the hospital bed opposite him,11-year-old Rihana Lamichhane narrowly escaped.

‘I was at school. They closed the school because of this and asked us to go home,’ she said. ‘As I was crossing the river,suddenly flood water came gushing down.’

She suffered injuries to her chest and leg but said: ‘I am happy to be safe. I have no idea what happened to my friends.’

‘We have asked both India and China to help us with the rescue efforts,’ said Sasmit Pokharel,a spokesperson for the Nepali government.

Damaged houses near the swollen banks of the Trishuli River (Picture: AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Some 88 people have been rescued by the army so far. Another 115 people are trapped in a village with 15 helicopters mobilised to help.

The Indian government has began evacuating some of their citizens,as more than 100 Indian nationals are missing.

What caused the disaster?

In the immediate chaos of the disaster,speculation emerged that the flash flood may have been caused by an earthquake.But the shaking believed to be a tremor was in fact a landslide that was so powerful it registered as a 5.2 magnitude earthquake,according to the US Geological Survey.Simon Cook,a glaciologist at the University of Dundee,who is part of a team of scientists studying the disaster, said that it appears that a chunk of a glacier broke off and fell thousands of feet into the valley below.  He told Metro: ‘There is a huge amount of pulverisation of that ice into water ultimately,which we think has caused a large chunk of that flood water.’  However,the sheer amount of gushing water didn’t fully correspond to the relatively small amount of glacier that had chipped away,he said.  Simon continued: ‘Our international team working on this has seen quite a lot of these events over the last few years.  ‘And this one is just a bit bonkers. The videos are horrific and impressive in equal measure.  ‘What our team will be trying to get hold of over the next few days and weeks is where has all this water come from? Because our initial assessment is that it’s a relatively small chunk of ice that’s fallen off that has led to this massive catastrophe.’ The Himalayas have witnessed similar events before.In 2021,villages were submerged and hundreds of people killed in the Ukkarakhand region of India when a glacier fell into a river,releasing a powerful flood.Then in July 2022,part of the Marmolada Serac glacier fell in the Italian Dolomites,sending an avalanche of ice,snow and rock that buried climbers,killing eleven people.Last year,the collapse of the Birch Glacier in Switzerland buried a village after around 20 million tonnes of rock and ice fell down the mountainside. Warning systems allowed an evacuation,but one person died.Simon said: ‘There’s quite a few of these events in recent years. And our strong suspicion is that climate has been part of that.‘There is permafrost,a sort of icy cement that is around the valley walls and these high mountain regions where it is very cold.‘That is thawing and degrading and warming. So the whole landscape is kind of loosening up – there is more melt water and more potential for landslides and debris flows.’A torrent of muddy water surges through Trishuli river (Picture: AFP)Other nationalities unaccounted for include: 17 Malaysians,12 Britons,four South Africans,and three from the United States,one Australian,and one person from the Netherlands.The worst affected area,Rasuwa district,witnessed similar flash floods to those in August last year,when a glacial lake in neighboring Tibet overflowed as a result of high temperatures in the mountain region.Nine people lost their lives and critical infrastructure including a bridge connecting the two countries were damaged at the time.Some 291 foreign nationals are missing,including 12 Brits,along with 93 people from Nepal (Picture: Reuters)China has deployed at least 574 rescuers to the land crossing but the flood sediment is posing a challenge. Other countries have also offered to help.Authorities have warned that a second flood may occur since a blockage is still lodged upstream on the Lhende Khola river.Flood alerts have also been issued in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,which border Nepal,since several rivers flow down the Himalayas into their plains.Got a story? Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at . Or you can submit your videos and pictures here.For more stories like this,check our news page.Follow Metro.co.uk on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news updates. You can now also get Metro.co.uk articles sent straight to your device. Sign up for our daily push alerts here.