Flash floods in Nepal: What we know so far | BBC News

Villages have been swept away in northern Nepal with mudslides in neighboring Tibet . This is a remote area, hard to reach . You're fighting against the terrain and the weather conditions . They were talking about hearing a roaring sound . Within seconds, [music] they saw tons of water gushing through the mountains . Officials are anticipating this is one of the worst disasters since the 2015 [music] earthquake . It's a race to save lives right now . More than 500 people are missing, including tourists from 28 different countries . And officials are bracing for large numbers of fatalities . We'll bring you up to date on what we know about the flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet , but I want to first show you the scale of the incident . And a warning, you may find some of these pictures distressing . This is CCTV footage that shows the moment people attempted to flee just seconds before this massive mudslide engulfed the border crossing between Nepal and China . The clip has been . You will see that we've added a white flash due to the distressing content . You will see that people are running and then completely swept away . Here's more CCTV footage from the same border crossing . A massive wall of mud and water hits the site as those people flee . Well, let's bring in our global affairs reporter, Um Barasan Ethirajan . Uh talk us through then what has unfolded . This morning, all of a sudden, people heard a ferocious sound and soon they saw huge waves of a water, boulder, and mud slamming through the mountain valleys , sweeping away whatever was on its way, uh destroying houses, power stations, offices, whatever, bridges . And also, uh several office blocks were taken away by this uh ferocious water . We still don't know how many people have died , how many people are still missing even though the government is giving their estimates, the figures are changing , but it is one of the worst disasters Nepal has faced in recent decades . Our colleagues from the BBC's Nepali service have been speaking to people who witnessed the floods in one of the worst hit areas . Here's what they told us