Families in Desperate Search for Victims of the ‘Himalayan Tsunami’ in Nepal

Hit Kumari Tamang searches for missing family members, including her son, at a hospital in Kathmandu, India. Credit: Raman Paudel/IPSby Raman Paudel (kathmandu)Wednesday, September 02, 2026Inter Press Service KATHMANDU, September 2 (IPS) - On Sunday afternoon, Mingma Tamang, 29, rushed into the TU Teaching Hospital’s emergency ward, where a rescue team had just brought in an injured person in the Rasuwa flash flood – but she soon left grim-faced. Mingma, who has been searching for her husband, Manoj Tamang, 20, missing in the flood, moved towards the hospital’s reception area, her eyes circling the wall where hundreds of photos of unidentified bodies hang.She entered the hospital carrying her husband’s photo in her hand. She again walked out of the gate with tears in her eyes.After her husband Manoj went missing in the devastating flood, locally referred to as a ‘Himalayan tsunami’, in Rasuwa, Nepal, one of the major ports to China, she spent each day trudging through the hospitals’ emergency wards and mortuaries in the capital, Kathmandu.With her head covered by a colourful flowered scarf (Fulbuttey Rumal, commonly used as a love metaphor in Nepali literature), the newlywed, six-m...