The government on Wednesday ordered the national special search-and-rescue team and rotating units from Tainan, Hsinchu City and Chiayi County to prepare for departure, National Fire Agency Director-General Hsiao Huang-chang (蕭煥章) said.

Although Taiwan has yet to receive a request for help, the national special rescue-and-research team would respond swiftly, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to requests for rescue operations from affected countries, he told a news conference following the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Photo: AP

At least 359 people were killed, local media reported, and more than 1,300 are missing, including scores of foreigners and pilgrims. Hundreds others have been displaced across the Himalayan region.

The Mainland Affairs Council late on Wednesday said it was seeking information on the safety of 51 Taiwanese nationals registered as being in Tibet.

It asked the Straits Exchange Foundation to use available “channels” to check on the safety of Taiwanese in the affected area, without specifying what those channels were.

Photo: USGS / Landsat 9 / Reuters

Images showed what appeared to be the second floors of buildings in Nepal’s hard-hit Nuwakot District slathered in mud after the torrent rushed by. Debris hung from tree branches and wires, vehicles were buried and some stunned survivors were caked in mud.

Nepalese Minister of Home Affairs Sudhan Gurung said the focus remained on finding survivors as rescue teams located 100 missing Indian visitors, mostly pilgrims, and 25 Chinese workers in the worst-hit region around Trishuli.

More than 650 foreigners were still unaccounted for while Nepalese authorities were yet to determine the number of locals missing.

The Red Cross said that entire villages had been destroyed and impassable roads and bridges had left communities cut off, adding that the full scale of the disaster remains unclear.

“It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us,” said Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor being treated in a Nepalese hospital.

“As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher. When I saw it enter our home, I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take her to the terrace, but she was swept away by the mud.”

A helicopter ferried him to safety four hours later.

“My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud,” he added. “She’s gone.”

The tally of missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County was 558, the state-run China Central Television said, including 260 foreign nationals.

China said the death toll stayed at three.

The missing foreigners in Nepal belonged to more than two dozen countries, including 288 from India, 63 from the US, 51 from Malaysia, 34 from Australia, 33 from the UK and 25 from Canada.

Early reports from Nepalese officials suggested an earthquake in the area could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger the floods.

The US Geological Survey said an earthquake with magnitude initially reported as 4.4 was in fact seismic energy generated by the collapse of glacial rock and ice, followed by debris flow.

Chinese authorities have identified risks from a still-dammed lake in Gyirong, upstream from the mudslide and flood-stricken Tibet-Nepal border crossing that could complicate rescue efforts, particularly as rains are forecast, China Central Television said.

Yesterday morning, the dammed lake was estimated at 2 million cubic meters in volume and was already overflowing, state media said citing the Chinese water resources ministry.