Floods and landslides caused by heavy rains have killed at least 59 people in Nepal and 44 others are missing, police said Saturday.
Faced with the heavy rainfall which began on Friday, the authorities had warned of flash floods in several rivers.
“For the moment, there are 59 dead, 36 injured and 44 missing,” Nepalese police spokesperson Dan Bahadur Karki told AFP.
More than 200 cases of flooding and landslides have been recorded to date, he said.
Rivers in the capital Kathmandu overflowed, flooding homes near the banks.
“It’s scary. I had never seen such devastation,” said Mahamad Shabuddin, 34, owner of a motorcycle repair shop near the swollen Bagmati River.
Some survivors took refuge on the roofs of buildings, others fled through the brackish water.
“When I went out in the middle of the night, the water was up to my shoulders. My whole truck is underwater,” lamented Hari Malla, a 49-year-old driver.
“Police are working with other agencies and residents to rescue and find missing people,” said Basanta Adhikari, a spokesperson for Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.
More than 3,000 security forces were deployed to assist in the rescue operations using helicopters and motorboats.
Landslides blocked several highways, leaving hundreds of people struggling.
All domestic flights from Kathmandu were canceled from Friday evening, affecting more than 150 departures.
Monsoons from June to September cause death and destruction across South Asia each year, but the number of deadly floods and landslides has increased in recent years.
Experts say climate change has worsened their frequency and intensity.
A landslide in July in Chitwan district threw two buses and their 59 passengers into a river. Three people managed to escape alive and the authorities were only able to recover twenty bodies in perilous rescue conditions.
More than 220 people have died this year in Nepal in rain-related natural disasters.