Nepal observed a national day of mourning on Monday, September 7, 2026, marking 13 days since catastrophic flash floods and mudslides killed more than 1,300 people. As flags flew at half-mast, search operations persisted across Himalayan river valleys, where hundreds of missing hydropower workers remain trapped in debris-choked tunnels.
A massive wall of mud and rock—unleashed when a glacier broke off along the Himalayan border shared with China’s Tibet region—swept away towns, buried highways, and devastated river communities.
Government offices within the Hindu-majority nation, along with diplomatic missions abroad, lowered the national flag to half-mast, the Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed. In accordance with local custom, families stayed home while relatives visited to pay respects on the 13th day since the tragedy.
Symbolic Funerals and Public Frustration in Kathmandu
Because thousands remain unaccounted for, several relatives of the missing performed symbolic funeral rites on Monday. Cremation holds deep significance in Hindu tradition, and performing the final ceremonies without bodies provided some families with a sense of spiritual release, The Associated Press noted.
Yet grief quickly turned to public protest. Near the offices of the prime minister and key ministries in Kathmandu, families gathered to demand accelerated search and rescue operations for hundreds of workers stranded at remote hydropower projects along the rushing Bhotekhoshi River.
“We are here because we have not heard of any rescue attempt on this project, but it has been 13 days already. The only thing we have been able to do is pray to God and hope for a miracle.”
Photo: Reuters
Sumana Shrestha, protester searching for her missing husband
Sumana Shrestha stood among the demonstrators holding a poster featuring a photograph of her 55-year-old husband, a consulting geologist at the Trishuli hydropower plant whose project office was buried under two and a half stories of debris. Another protester, Mahesh Prasad Shrestha, displayed a picture of his brother Niraj Shrestha, a 52-year-old engineer at the same site.
“They should have ordered big helicopters from places like China or India to fly in equipment.”
Mahesh Prasad Shrestha, protester
Hydropower Tunnels and International Rescue Operations
Authorities report that rescue efforts have converged primarily on 12 hydropower projects across the disaster zone.
Hopes of locating additional survivors were buoyed over the weekend after teams successfully pulled three individuals alive from the muck: two Nepalese workers on Friday, followed by a Chinese national on Saturday.
Arnold Dix, an Australian rescue expert, described the ongoing catastrophe as an unprecedented operational hurdle.
“We are facing something I have never faced before. Not one rescue, but multiple potential rescues, unfolding at the same time, in different places, each with its own dangers, uncertainties, and lives that may still be saved.”
Arnold Dix, Australian rescue expert
Official Response and Jail Security in Nuwakot
With search teams actively combing through mud and wreckage, the government refrained from organizing broader public ceremonies. Phanindra Paudel of the National Emergency Operation Center stated that no formal state programs were scheduled because search operations remain the absolute priority.
Photo: Al Jazeera
As President Ram Chandra Paudel toured flood-impacted regions on Monday to assess the scale of the destruction, emergency workers also managed secondary crises.
Authorities confirmed that while around 50 prisoners briefly broke through perimeter walls as the flooding began, security forces recaptured them within 100 meters of the facility.
Across the northern border, Chinese officials reported on Sunday that recovery teams had retrieved 12 additional bodies in Tibet, where search operations for the missing also continue unabated.
