(TibetanReview.net, Aug30’26) – Nepal’s former Forest and Environment Minister Madhav Prasad Chaulagain has said China didn’t warn his country before the devastating floods of ice, rock, and mud tore through it on Aug 26 morning despite the existence of a protocol for the purpose, reported ndtv.com Aug 29. He has said the human cost was worsened by a failure of information-sharing between the two neighbours.
A smaller glacier incident in 2025 had already produced an agreed protocol, but that mechanism was not used. “We missed that opportunity,” he has said in an interview.
Chaulagain has also rejected Beijing’s assertion that the collapse began on Nepali territory, insisting that the event originated in Tibet.
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Sixteen people have been confirmed dead and 546 others remain missing as of 6 pm Aug 29 after the mudslide which struck Gyirong Port on the Tibet-Nepal border on Aug 26 morning, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency Aug 30. A total of 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries have been identified as unaccounted for, the report said.
The foreigners were stated to included 49 from India; 33 Latvians; 18 from the United States; 15 from Britain; six each from Canada and Australia; four from South Africa; three each from Malaysia, Germany and Russia; two from Ireland, Estonia, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand; and one from Kazakhstan, Finland, Lithuania, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, and Hungary. No foreigner was stated to remain stranded in Tibet.
Media reports continue to question China’s censorship and control on information on the tragedy on the Tibetan side of the border and on whether it failed to alert kathmandu when the mudslide first hit Kyirong before it barrelled down through Gyirong Port to downstream Nepal where the level and scale of death and destruction appear to have been far more severe. “Appear to have been” because we do not know what really happened on the Tibetan side of the border.
A barrier lake formed near the Tibet-Nepal border after last week’s massive ice-rock avalanche, which covered around 100,000 square metres — roughly the size of 14 standard football fields – has fully drained through natural outflow, reported the kathmandupost.com Aug 30, citing China’s Ministry of Water Resources today, easing fears of another sudden flood downstream.
However, a second barrier lake, Lake 02, has also been identified about 5 kilometres upstream, said China’s official news.cgtn.com Aug 30. It did not say anything further about this lake.
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China has kept emphasizing the point that the ice-rock avalanche which caused the devastating Aug 26 mudslide that hit Kyirong in Tibet and then Rasuwa on the other side of the border and further on originated from a high-mountain glacier in Nepal.
A glacier on the south slope of Mount Langtang Lirung in Nepal fractured at an altitude of about 5,200 meters, triggering an ice-rock avalanche, said China’s official Xinhua news agency Aug 30, citing a press conference held by the information office of the regional government.
The avalanche plunged rapidly to an altitude of around 4,000 metres, scouring the mountainside and developing into a massive debris flow, which surged about 22 kilometres before reaching Gyirong Port at an altitude of around 1,800 metres.
The disaster flattened an area of about 0.7 square kilometres, destroying 27 buildings and related facilities in the area, the report said.
The big question is whether even if all this is true, China could not have alerted downstream Nepal about the oncoming tragedy.
China has sought to rule out this possibility by claiming the mudslide from the Nepalese side took only six to seven minutes to reach the Gyirong border crossing, citing findings of Chinese scientists.
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The death toll has hit 750, with 3,044 missing, on the two sides of the border taken together as of Aug 30, reported Reuters. A total of 7,514 have been reported rescued in Nepal so far.
The Red Cross estimates that more than 90,000 people are likely affected by the disaster, which China has linked to the effects of climate change, the report said.
The report cited China’s CCTV (China Central Television) as reporting that Beijing and Kathmandu were working together to identify missing citizens and foreign nationals, as well as strengthening cooperation in disaster prevention and mitigation, and climate-change response.