Nepal Police raise toll to 616 in new Saturday morning bulletin

Nepal Disaster Update LivePublished 29 August 2026, 6:00 am NPTRevised after publicationSuperseded by a later briefing

Nepal Police raised the confirmed toll again, to 616 dead, in a bulletin posted on the force's own website giving the count of bodies found as of 6am Saturday. That is up from the 553 the force had given in Friday's 5pm bulletin. The new bulletin did not restate injured, rescued or missing figures, so those still stand at Nepal Police's last published count of 1,473 injured and 1,545 rescued as of Friday morning, and NDRRMA's separate count of 1,924 missing in Nepal from Friday evening. China's state media put Tibet-side deaths at 7 as of Saturday morning, unchanged since the last update, and Xinhua's missing count on the China side at 554. The flood hit Timure in Rasuwa on Wednesday morning and ran down the Bhote Koshi into the Trishuli and the Narayani.

Rescue counts vary by agency and by day. Police said 1,545 people caught in the flood had been rescued as of the 7am bulletin, and NDRRMA told ABC News on Friday afternoon that 3,253 people had been rescued by helicopter across the flood zone, a broader tally that has not been named or broken down; NDRRMA's Friday evening update put that same tally at about 3,742, AP reports. NDRRMA's own earlier, named list stands at 113. The Nepali Army said on Friday its helicopters had rescued 706 people from Timure, Syabrubesi and Mailung by 3pm, up from 449 at 12:20pm, including 40 foreign nationals: 29 Indian, 4 German, 4 Chinese, 1 Omani and 2 South Korean, Onlinekhabar reports. Nepal Tourism Board said 117 stranded tourists have now been rescued from the Bhotekoshi area, 85 of them Indian, 16 Chinese, 9 South Korean, 2 American and 2 Italian, with 3 not yet identified by nationality, Onlinekhabar reports. Twenty eight police personnel remain out of contact.

The Saturday morning bulletin gave a new district breakdown, adding up to the 616 total: Chitwan 233, Nawalparasi East 158, Gorkha 48, Nawalparasi West 47, Dhading 45, Nuwakot 41, Tanahun 31 and Rasuwa 13, Nepal Police said. Nawalparasi East and Nawalparasi West took the largest increases from Friday's count, alongside Chitwan. Health facilities in Chitwan, which has the most bodies, can hold only around 50 at a time, which is slowing identification and release to families.

NDRRMA repeated its missing count of 977 people in Nepal in Friday afternoon's update alongside the new death toll, ABC News reports, so the figure has not moved since Friday morning. Nepal's tourism board says 517 of the missing are foreign nationals, from 33 countries. Out of contact does not mean dead. Phone lines, power and internet are down across the valley and are coming back slowly.

The barrier lake upstream near the Chhochen Khola and Purepu Tsangpo was reported to have breached, but Nepal's government has not confirmed a dam collapse and the two accounts have not been reconciled. Chinese state media report the lake has since grown rather than drained. See the update above for what is and is not confirmed. USGS first read the shaking on Wednesday as an earthquake, then found no earthquake took place: the signal came from an ice and rock avalanche that fell into the Lhende Khola on the Tibet side, dammed the river, then broke.

The Home Administration says 13,295 security personnel are working the flood zone: 7,250 from Nepal Police, 4,200 from the Nepali Army and 1,845 from the Armed Police Force, Khabarhub reports. NDRRMA's Friday evening update put the number of security personnel mobilised even higher, at about 14,829, AP reports. Prime Minister Balendra Shah travelled to Bidur in Nuwakot on Thursday to see the damage.

In India, the NDRF and the Sashastra Seema Bal have rescue teams on standby in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and the NDRF says the Gandak, which the Narayani becomes downstream, could see higher water levels. Nepal turned down broader offers of search and rescue teams from India, China, the US, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh earlier in the week, the Kathmandu Post reports, saying its own army and police could handle the operation. By Friday evening it reversed course for a narrower group. See the update above for who is coming and why. Cash donations still go through a single channel into the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund.

Keep off the banks of the Bhote Koshi, the Trishuli and the Narayani until officials say it is clear.

Sources for this briefing

• Nepal Police
• Onlinekhabar
• Onlinekhabar
• Onlinekhabar
• Onlinekhabar
• Onlinekhabar
• Khabarhub
• ABC News Australia
• The Kathmandu Post
• ICIMOD
• Business Standard
• ANI
• The Kathmandu Post
• The Associated Press

Written and checked by hand against the sources above. Figures are attributed to the bulletin they came from; where two sources disagreed, the lower confirmed figure was used. If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets corrected or removed.