Ünal Üstel, the north’s Turkish Cypriot prime minister, has announced an inquiry has been launched into the marine disaster which he described as “the worst in Cypriot history”. “Every angle of this incident will be investigated,” he told local media. “Even the smallest negligence will be uncovered. There will be no leniency for anyone thought to bear responsibility.”
We’re pausing our live coverage of the disaster. Here are the key developments from the last few hours: The death toll in Nepal has risen to 788, taking the overall toll to 804. Chinese state media earlier confirmed 16 dead in Tibet and 546 people missing following Wednesday’s disaster. There are 3,048 people unaccounted for. Nepal’s Chitwan district has become the site of mass burials for hundreds of unidentified victims whose bodies were swept away by the devastating flash floods. Authorities have dug hundreds of graves in the district’s Devghat forest, which is serving as a temporary burial ground for bodies too badly decomposed to be identified. Morgues across Nepal are already overflowing. Authorities have been overwhelmed trying to identify the dead, with many bodies beyond recognition and turning up miles downstream. About 85 Americans remain missing, the state department said on Sunday. State department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told ABC News that nine Americans have been evacuated and that he was unaware of any US nationals dying in the disaster. China said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were missing on the Tibetan side of a border crossing with Nepal: the highest number was from Nepal at 104, while 49 Indian, 33 Latvian, 18 American and 15 British citizens were also unaccounted for. Senator Penny Wong, Australian minister for foreign affairs, said Australia is deploying a further $3m in humanitarian assistance to flood-afflicted areas along the Nepal-China border. Wong highlighted that 42 Australians remain unaccounted for. Authorities have issued high-alert fresh water surge and flash flood warnings for the Trishuli Bazaar area in Nepal’s Nuwakot district following severe upstream glacial collapses and debris flows. In a breakthrough late on Saturday, the Nepali army was able to insert a pipe into a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydroelectric site where more than 100 workers may still be alive and trapped inside such tunnels, with rescue efforts still ongoing.
Rescuers in Nepal and Tibet have battled through leg-sucking mud amid the threat of fresh flooding to search for thousands of people still missing after a deadly wall of water swept through the Himalayan border zone, engulfing entire villages. The latest updates on Sunday put the number of missing at 3,048, including hundreds of foreigners. There was a total of 804 confirmed deaths across Nepal and Tibet, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India. Nepal said it had begun the task of burying some of the hundreds of bodies after first taking DNA samples so that families could later reclaim them after identification and perform traditional funeral rites. The disaster, which struck the border on Wednesday morning, was caused by a glacial collapse which sent a wall of water and debris downstream, the US Geological Survey said. Nepal’s foreign minister called for a global response to the climate crisis, saying the small, poor Himalayan nation was bearing a disproportionate share of its impact. “Despite having only 0.1% contribution to global emissions, people of Nepal have become major victims of climate change,” Shisir Khanal said on Saturday. More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far. Nepal said on Sunday that 2,502 people, including 592 foreigners, were out of contact in the country. It reported an updated death toll of 788 people. Chinese authorities on Sunday reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, of whom 261 were foreign nationals, including 104 from Nepal, 49 from India, 33 from Latvia, 18 from the US and 15 British citizens. In a breakthrough at the weekend, Nepal’s army was able to insert a pipe into a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydroelectric site, where more than 100 workers are believed to be trapped. The home minister, Sudan Gurung, said: “We have already started sending air through the small opening, and we will now begin excavation work and send the rescue team inside.” It is a race to reach the workers, who may still be alive inside the tunnels, with rescue efforts focused on the Trishuli 3A and 3B sites. They are among 933 hydropower workers who are among the missing, according to Nepal’s disaster authority. Nepal warned on Sunday of rising flood waters and urged rescue teams to exercise caution. “We have received information that the flood flow in the Bhotekoshi river in Rasuwa has increased further,” the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said. Flood warnings were sent to people’s phones early on Sunday as rescue crews worked to clear a highway connecting Kathmandu to one of the areas hit by the floods. In Dhading, one of the worst-hit regions in Nepal, some people began returning to ruined homes to see what could be salvaged. Residents of the flood-hit villages said they were struggling to make sense of near-constant alarms they had received since the initial floods. One resident, Govind Shreshta, told the Associated Press: “Sometimes they say a flood is coming, then we have to run again to higher ground, even at night. There is also rain. It’s really difficult for me. I have a 72-year-old father and 70-year-old mum. I must carry them and I am exhausted. It’s going on like this for those who are still alive.” The government estimated Nepal’s reconstruction bill could run to billions of dollars. Officials in Nepal called for forensic testing kits to identify bodies and freezer units to store them in, saying bodies that had been in water could decompose at a faster rate. Survivors face an agonising wait to learn the fate of missing relatives and the prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing. “All the settlements near the river were swept away,” Buddhi Ram Dangol told Agence France-Presse in Nepal’s Nuwakot district. “There is nothing left.” In Tibet, where Chinese authorities are the only source of information, rescue operations were paused at the hardest-hit area of Gyirong over the risk of more flooding from a newly formed lake. A total of 2,141 rescuers were near the Gyirong site, the Xinhua state news agency reported, including more than 500 in the worst-hit area. In Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, relatives and friends gathered outside the main government hospital from early morning, desperately searching for news of missing loved ones. Many shuffled between the help desk and the hospital noticeboard, clutching photographs and scanning lists of patients in the hope of finding them. Dil Maya Lama stood weeping near the help desk at the hospital, searching for information about her 26-year-old brother, a driver for a hydropower company in Rasuwa. She had travelled from Ramechhap, about 80 miles (130km) away. “I came here with the hope that I might find him,” she told the Associated Press. “There is no information about him.” Nelza Moktan sought information about her missing cousin, who also worked as a driver in Rasuwa. “I feel hopeless. It has already been four days,” she said. With Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
A headteacher in Nepal evacuated 900 children from a school moments before a deadly wall of water struck their town amid the devastating flash floods that have killed almost 800 people and left thousands missing. Rajendra Dawadi decided to halt classes and order children to higher ground after receiving warnings about the scale of the flooding heading their way. Dawadi, the headteacher at Tribhuvan Trishuli secondary school in Nuwakot, which has 1,600 pupils, said he had received four warnings from different people within minutes, including one from Betrawati, a town directly upstream. This prompted him to take immediate action. “I decided I shouldn’t delay any more,” he told the BBC. “Even if the flood was not coming, it was just a matter of a single day’s classes.” Dawadi said during the evacuation of the school he saw a hostel building about 100 metres from the river being engulfed by the torrent of flood water. “If we had made the decision 10 minutes later, all of us, including the students and me, would not be able to speak to you today,” he said. One student said Dawadi’s decision had saved their lives with moments to spare. Yunisha, 16, told reporters: “I, along with my friends, survived by just 10 seconds.” She described the children running up a muddy path to escape as water and debris inundated the town. “Within no time, the bazaar was swept away in front of my eyes,” she said. She was reunited with her family three days later. At least 69 schools have been destroyed or damaged by the floods, affecting nearly 19,000 children, according to the charity Save the Children. In Dhading, one of the areas worst hit by the floods, a group of schoolchildren survived the disaster when they left their classroom for their lunch break. Others in the area escaped when teachers told them to quickly evacuate classrooms just before the waters came crashing in. The mother of one child told the Associated Press that teachers had warned students: “There is a flood and you should leave bags and tiffins. That’s how they managed to survive.” More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far. The country said on Sunday 2,502 people, including 592 foreigners, were out of contact. It reported an updated death toll of 781 people. The disaster, which struck the Nepal-Tibet border region of the Himalayas on Wednesday morning, was caused by a glacial collapse that sent a wall of water and debris cascading downstream, the US Geological Survey said. Nepal’s foreign minister has called for a global response to the climate crisis, saying the Nepali people had disproportionately become “major victims of climate change” despite having contributed a fraction of the planet’s fossil fuel emissions.
Fifteen British nationals are reported to be missing in China as the search continues for survivors of the devastating flooding in Nepal and Tibet. Nepali and Chinese authorities confirmed an updated death toll of at least 810 on Sunday. More than 3,000 people are believed missing after flash floods triggered by a massive glacier collapse in the Himalayas on Wednesday engulfed Gyirong port on the Nepal-China border. The 15 missing British people are among 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries missing in China, according to figures released by Chinese authorities, bringing the total of missing Britons between Tibet and Nepal to 48. The Tibet autonomous region’s government said the total missing there also included 104 Nepalis, 49 people from India, 33 from Latvia and 18 from the US. Thirty-three British people had already been declared missing on the Nepal side of the border. Some were on a pilgrimage at the time of the flood, including Hemangini Jitendra Patel and Hema Sunil Amin, two sisters who were last seen on the Friendship Bridge on the border. The figure for missing Americans has been disputed by the US state department, which declared on Sunday that at least 85 US citizens were missing. The department’s spokesperson, Tommy Pigott, said getting accurate information from the region had been difficult, “made even more so by the devastation and the remoteness that we see”. Chinese authorities have said at least 16 people have died on their side of the border. But there are concerns over a possible lack of transparency from the Chinese government, which has prevented footage of the floods from being shared in the country and may have downplayed the casualties. Police in Nepal said 794 people had been confirmed to have died there and at least 2,742 injured. Numerous areas remain at risk of fresh flooding and people who have returned to their homes have been told to remain alert and be prepared to evacuate again at short notice. Rescue efforts have been affected by the threat of landslides and dangerous weather as well as confusion over which side of the border victims had been on when the waters struck. Chinese state television reported that officials in Beijing, far better resourced than their Nepali counterparts, had mobilised more than 2,100 rescue workers and allocated more than 220m yuan (£24m) to support relief efforts. Equipment and supplies have been airdropped to frontline workers, while Chinese soldiers used life-detection equipment to look for the missing, CCTV said. The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, had already travelled to the region. Numerous countries have pledged to help Nepal, including the US, which has offered $3.6m (£2.7m) in humanitarian aid, “including up to three months of emergency food assistance to up to 10,000 flood-affected households”, on top of $500,000 previously pledged, and Australia, which will donate more than $3m in assistance. Britain has committed £5m to Nepal and sent a rapid deployment team, which arrived in Kathmandu on Saturday. A UK Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are working around the clock to support British nationals and their families affected by the devastating floods on the Nepal-China border. We are coordinating closely with the Nepali and Chinese authorities and have deployed consular support staff to the region to ensure British nationals can access support.”
The bodies continue to wash up. But the morgues have already run out of room. Since the deadly floods coursed through the Himalayan valleys of Nepal and Tibet, the numbers of people killed have continued to rise. The bodies have surfaced in their hundreds and continue to be pulled from the thick, tar-like mud that engulfed everything after the flood waters receded. By Sunday, the death toll stood at 804 in Nepal and Tibet. Morgues across Nepal are already overflowing. Authorities say they are overwhelmed with the task of trying to identify the dead, many mangled beyond recognition and turning up miles from home. As places to safely store the victims run out, mass burials have begun in the district of Bharatpur. DNA samples were taken from each body before it was given a tag and a location number, wrapped in a plastic bag and then placed in a shallow grave. The hope, said the police, was that these bodies would eventually be identified by loved ones through DNA and retrieved for proper funeral rites. In Chitwan, about 100 miles downstream from the region worst hit by the flash floods and mudslides, more than 250 bodies have washed up along the riverbanks. But they are in such a disfigured state that only nine have been successfully identified. Many will now be buried, at least temporarily, in the forest on the edge of the city. In an effort to speed up the identification exercise, local officials have adopted a macabre approach of simply asking people to go through pictures of the bodies and look for identifying features: a necklace, a wedding ring, a tattoo, a scar. Photos of those recovered have been placed on to PowerPoint slideshows, for relatives to sit patiently through, and have been uploaded to the Nepal police website. Outside the morgue in the capital, Kathmandu, photographs of the dead inside have been posted on the walls. Yet with more than 3,000 still reported missing in Nepal and Tibet, there are fears that the numbers of dead may still rise exponentially. Many of the worst-hit areas, where entire villages were wiped away by the tidal wave of mud, water and debris, are still inaccessible except by army helicopter. Speaking on Sunday, the foreign secretary, Amrit Bahadur Rai, said the Nepal government had requested “more than 1,000 freezer units” for safe storage of the dead. Even in areas lower down the river valley that were decimated by the floods but have remained accessible by road, search and rescue teams have struggled to retrieve all those killed and buried in the mud. On Sunday afternoon in Devighat, a sacred town on the Trishuli River that was left in ruins by the floods, police search and rescue teams prepared to pull another victim from the muddy ruins of a house. All that was visible through the thick mud was their feet. “It is very tough work. We have retrieved 10 bodies from here so far, maybe there will be more,” said Amabadutta Bhatta, a police superintendent working as part of search and rescue in the city. “The floods destroyed the first and second storey of most homes here. When we finally clear all the mud, which may be many months, who knows what we might find.” Those who survived the floods in Devighat have slowly come back to see the remains of their houses, many of which were wiped away altogether. Standing next to the carcass of her house, reduced to a few concrete blocks and twisted metal, Usha Nepali, 49, wept for the home where she had raised her four children and then her three grandchildren. “I invested everything to build this house, so now I don’t know where to go and what to do,” said Nepali. “Nothing is left except this cloth on my back. I haven’t even been able to change clothes since the floods. How can we rebuild this house? This land is no longer safe but it’s the only land we have. The river has taken everything.” The precariousness of living next to the Trishuli River was underlined on Sunday as the fast-moving waters again swelled dangerously high and rescuers urged people to get to higher ground quickly. Many in Devighat were packing up the few items they could find in their homes, never to return. Jamuna Magar, 36, said her husband’s family had been living in Devighat for generations. She had come here when she got married and described it as “such a beautiful place”. In the minutes after they got warning of the flood, she had time to grab her gold but nothing else. As she stood by the ruins of her house, clutching the only thing she had been able to retrieve so far – a plastic vat of vegetable cooking oil – she said she did not see how they could ever live in Devighat again. “We had experienced flooding before, but we never knew a flood like this could come and take our house,” she said. “Everything we owned was on the ground floor of the house and now it’s all lost. Even our refrigerator washed away. I’m too worried about my life, about my children’s lives to stay here any longer.” She feared it would take “decades before they can rebuild Devighat again”.
My friend Amin Mughal, who has died aged 91, was a Pakistani writer and critic living in exile in the UK, having been jailed for his political activities under the brutal regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. In London he worked as a journalist and commentator on BBC World Service Urdu, and was editor of Awāz, an Urdu daily published in London. He also wrote for the weekly Pakistani English-language magazine Viewpoint, based in Lahore, and the Daily Jang, published in Urdu and English in Lahore and London. His father, Mohammad Din, who served in the British Indian army in the first world war, ran a military hardware shop in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, central India, until the partition of the country in 1947. His mother, Fazal Bibi, was a homemaker and avid reader of newspapers. Following partition, the family settled in Kotli Loharan, in the Sialkot district of the Pakistani part of Punjab. There Amin was born, the youngest of five children, with a brother and three sisters. He went to the local high school and Murray college, then to Government College University Lahore for his BSc and a master’s in English. In 1958, he was offered a lectureship at Government Islamia College in Lahore, where he taught English language and literature for 20 years. He was ousted from the college along with two communist colleagues, Manzoor Ahmed and Eric Cyprian, on charges of anti-Islamic activities, but the real issue for Amin was his trade union work – he had been secretary general of the West Pakistan College Teachers’ Association. The three of them founded Shah Husain college in 1970 and ran it until it was nationalised under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto two years later. Amin was also a member of the National Awami party, becoming its secretary general in 1970 and deputised for Mazhar Ali Khan (the father of Tariq Ali) on the editorial team of Viewpoint, which was launched in 1975. He was imprisoned many times and under Gen Zia was sent to the notorious torture cells of Lahore Fort. Arriving in London in 1984, Amin was in the forefront of the movement for the recognition of the Punjabi language in Pakistan. For public debate, he wrote tracts in Punjabi on classical Sufi poets such as Shah Husain, Wāris Shāh, and Bulleh Shah, and also translated into English works of some contemporary Punjabi poets, including me. We met for the first time during a demonstration outside the Pakistan high commission, London, in 1985. I come from the other side of the India-Pakistan border and Amin and I shared our personal and political histories – everything except our denominations. He began working for the BBC and for Awāz in the 90s. For 20 years he did voluntary social service at his neighbourhood Royal Free hospital in Belsize Park. He also worked as a freelance translator and interpreter for the NHS and several local authorities in London. A voracious reader and a keen observer, Amin was one of the most ardent thinkers from Pakistan. He jokingly called himself a “Marxist Muslim and Buddhist”, and was a father figure to the leftwing Punjabi community throughout the UK. He is survived by 13 nephews and nieces.
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has defended her government’s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves. Rodríguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicolás Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called “the biggest oil deal in world history”. “The benefits are endless,” claimed Rodríguez, a former vice-president whom Trump backed after ordering Maduro’s capture during a special forces raid on the capital, Caracas. During a six-minute television broadcast, Venezuela’s acting leader claimed the deal would help her resource-rich country develop its economy, earn revenues of more than $209bn (£154bn), and become “an energy powerhouse”. Rodríguez said: “As everyone knows, our country has the biggest oil reserves in the world. But having resources underground isn’t enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure [and] production capacity to convert this wealth into wellbeing for our people.” She added: “It’s no use having our oil reserves underground, only to appear in statistics or bookkeeping … and for us not to be able to convert and translate them into development for Venezuela.” Trump announced the “groundbreaking” deal on Friday, calling it a “historic transaction [that] more than doubles American oil reserves … while helping to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity”. On Sunday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied.” Trump added: “The ‘topping out’ process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States.” Hours after seizing Maduro on 3 January, Trump warned Rodríguez she would face an even worse fate if she failed to toe the US line. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said. Details of the agreement – struck during months of secret talks – remain sparse but it will reportedly see Washington take control of 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. The South American country has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, with an estimated 303bn barrels, compared with Saudi Arabia’s 268bn and Iran’s 208bn. Rodríguez said the deal involved 17 “strategic oilfields” where it was hoped more than 1.5m barrels could be produced each day. But the deal has provoked outrage, both among members of Venezuela’s opposition and within the Chavismo political movement of which Rodríguez is part. Speaking on Friday, one prominent opposition figure, who asked not to be named, called the agreement “a massive land grab” by a “rapacious, mafioso United States”. Writing on X, Rafael Ramírez, the former head of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA, accused Rodríguez’s administration of “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the homeland” with the “neocolonial” transaction. “They are handing over 65bn barrels of our reserves to the United States. That has never happened in Venezuela, and I think nowhere else in the world,” Ramírez added in an interview with the newspaper El Nacional. On Saturday, dozens of leftwing protesters marched through Caracas with banners reading: “We are neither a colony, nor a back yard” and “Yankees go home!” Critics of the agreement shared an ironic meme on social media suggesting the state oil company’s name should be changed from PDVSA to “PDUSA”. In her broadcast, Rodríguez, the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who spent years denouncing “imperialist” attempts to snatch her country’s oil reserves, countered claims she was surrendering Venezuela’s natural resources to a foreign power. She thanked Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, for striking the deal but added: “There is something that must be made absolutely clear: Venezuela retains the ownership and sovereignty over its resources.” “We are thinking of Venezuela’s future,” claimed the politician, whose country was plunged into authoritarian rule and one of the world’s worst peacetime economic crises during Maduro’s 13-year rule. The deal represents an astonishing U-turn from Rodríguez and the socialist, anti-imperialist political movement she and Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávez after his death in 2013. In one 2024 speech, footage of which circulated on social media after Friday’s announcement, Rodríguez lambasted the Venezuelan opposition, accusing it of seeking to surrender the country’s oil, natural gas and gold reserves to its “masters” in Washington. Last September, as the US tightened the screws on Maduro, Rodríguez told the New York Times: “The Pentagon always had a strategic objective of obtaining Venezuelan reserves.” The deal will reportedly involve the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, which channels funds into projects seen as important for national security. It will also involve a private company owned by Alejandro Betancourt, a controversial UK-based tycoon who has emerged as a key intermediary between the Trump administration and Rodríguez. Opposition politicians fear the deal will scupper attempts to recover Venezuela’s democracy and hold fresh presidential elections. Maduro is widely believed to have stolen the last vote, in 2024, and Rodríguez has deflected questions about a future election, saying vaguely that it will happen “some day”. Trump has also said Venezuela is “not really ready” for elections. Writing on X, the opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa, said: “The only way to truly reactivate the Venezuelan economy in the long term and make this agreement benefit both parties is through a free election that leads to a representative government, clear rules of the game, rule of law, and institutions that allow our resources to be managed transparently and for the benefit of the nation.” Without that, the energy deal was like “a skyscraper [built] on pillars of clay”, Guanipa added.