Rescuers retrieve flood survivors caked in mud as death toll in Nepal-China border disaster climbs

Res­cuers pulled out sur­vivors caked in dark brown mud and he­li­copters lift­ed strand­ed peo­ple to safe­ty Fri­day, as Nepal and Chi­na raced to re­spond to cat­a­stroph­ic flash floods that killed near­ly 600 peo­ple and left al­most 2,500 miss­ing.

Res­cue teams were put on high alert for more flood­ing from a new lake that formed high up on the Hi­malayan moun­tains af­ter the ini­tial floods on Wednes­day. Ex­perts warned that the lake, cre­at­ed af­ter a glac­i­er col­lapse that trig­gered the floods, was start­ing to over­flow.

Nepal’s army was de­ployed to help res­cue more than 100 peo­ple be­lieved trapped in­side a tun­nel at a hy­dropow­er plant lo­cat­ed in the coun­try’s worst-hit dis­trict. Like else­where in the dis­as­ter zone, their work was com­pli­cat­ed by thick lay­ers of mud that cov­ered the site.