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For the sixth consecutive day on Monday, rescuers were clearing mud and debris in search of the thousands missing following the landslide that swept through the border between China and Nepal with the force of a tsunami.
"Our country is facing a natural disaster of unimaginable and heart-wrenching proportions," declared Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah.
The death toll worsened further on Monday, with 939 dead in Nepal and Tibet, China, and 4,400 missing. Unidentified bodies were buried in mass graves after DNA samples were taken.
Shibu Giri, a worker at a hydroelectric plant in Rasuwa, considers himself lucky to be alive.
A helicopter crew "tried to rescue me three times, but my body was trapped in the mud up to my waist," the 44-year-old Nepali told AFP.
"I asked them to throw me water and food," said Giri, who was eventually rescued and taken to the hospital.
In dangerous conditions and under the threat of rising floodwaters, rescuers are redoubling their efforts to try to pull potential survivors from the sea of mud that buried this remote Himalayan region.
"The difficulties are considerable," summarizes the deputy chief of the affected district of Nuwakot, police officer E. Hawadi.
"There are no roads left. They have all been washed away by the landslide," he said.
In addition to the casualties, more than 2,500 buildings were destroyed in the Trishuli River valley in Nepal, according to an AFP estimate based on satellite analysis from the European Copernicus observatory.
On Friday, the Nepali police shared the story of the miraculous rescue of a 6-year-old girl. "We found her under the rubble (...) only her head was visible," one of her officers, Bahadur Karki, told AFP, adding that the girl is out of danger.
Nepali authorities are searching for about a hundred workers who may have been trapped in a construction tunnel in the affected region.
- Like a tsunami -
Nepali soldiers, police, and guides are working day and night in these hard-to-reach places, assisted by specialists from India, China, and South Korea.
Hospitalized in the capital, Kathmandu, an employee of the Upper Trishuli hydroelectric plant, 44-year-old Shibu Giri, described to AFP on Monday how he miraculously escaped the devastating landslide.
"It was like a tsunami, with a huge roar and a massive cloud of dust," he noted. "Fleeing, we climbed to the heights (...) you couldn't see anything anymore, I really thought I wouldn't make it out alive."
On the Chinese side, rescue teams are exploring the heart of the affected area in Tibet with the same difficulties, particularly the Gyirong border post, whose building was erased by the waters.
Experts and scientists attribute Wednesday's devastating surge to the collapse of a massive glacier, which turned a peaceful river into a furious torrent.
The constant passage of helicopters and rescue patrol teams has allowed for the evacuation of thousands of victims, but authorities in both countries still have no word on nearly 4,500 people: 3,925 in Nepal, whose authorities revised an earlier figure downward, and 546 in China.
Among them are hundreds of foreigners, tourists, pilgrims, or workers.
In China, some have questioned the veracity of the official death toll. Ten internet users who suggested that authorities were intentionally underestimating it were punished, the police indicated without giving further details.
The president of the NGO International Campaign for Tibet, Tencho Gyatso, demanded "verified and complete information" from Beijing.
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- "Ongoing disaster" -
Families of the missing continue to crowd hospitals and morgues across Nepal in search of information about their loved ones.
This is especially the case in Bharatpur, in southern Nepal, where the force of the waters swept some 250 bodies more than 100 kilometers from the start of the disaster.
In one building, relatives are invited to attempt to identify them using video images.
While the Bharatpur morgue is overflowing with corpses, authorities began burying some on Sunday without even waiting for identification, for sanitary reasons.
These burials are taking place after DNA samples are taken, authorities specified, and are provisional for victims of Hindu faith.
Their families will be able to exhume and cremate them later, following a formal identification, as tradition dictates.
"Numerous bodies have been recovered and have begun to decompose," justified an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amrit Bahadur Rai.
For now, the cost of the tragedy amounts to "billions of dollars," the Nepal government warned.
[Publicidad]