Rescuers pulled out survivors caked in dark brown mud and helicopters lifted stranded people to safety, as Nepal and China raced to respond to catastrophic flash floods that killed nearly 600 people and left almost 2,500 missing.
The rescue efforts included a team that rappelled into a severely damaged checkpoint area on the Chinese side of the border between the two countries.
Rescuers were on high alert for more flooding from a new lake that formed high up in the Himalayan mountains after the initial floods on Wednesday.
Experts warned that the lake, created after a glacier collapse that triggered the floods, was starting to overflow.
Nepal’s army was deployed to help rescue more than 100 people believed trapped inside a tunnel at a hydropower plant located in the country’s worst-hit district.
Like elsewhere in the disaster zone, their work was complicated by thick layers of mud that covered the site.
