At Timure, a small trading town on Nepal's border with the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, customs officer Rajendra Dhungana was overseeing the morning's freight movement when the ground shook. 

Three minutes later, at 8:40 am on 26 August, a wall of water tore through the valley, sweeping away trucks, cargo and a bridge that had only recently been built. 

By evening, close to 100 people across Nepal were confirmed dead, and more than 750, including over 130 Indian nationals working or trekking in the region, remained unaccounted for.

Nepal's government called it one of the country's worst disasters since the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, and within hours it had formally asked India and China for rescue support.

A flood born of an earthquake 

The disaster began with a magnitude 4.4 earthquake, recorded by the US Geological Survey about 47 kilometres north of Gosainkunda inside Tibetan territory. 

Officials suspect the tremor destabilised a glacial lake in the mountains feeding the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers, releasing a sudden torrent through a glacial lake outburst flood, though the exact sequence is still being verified. 

Such floods, caused when an ice or moraine dam holding back a mountain lake gives way, have grown more frequent across the Himalayas as glaciers retreat and monsoon patterns shift, with Nepal recording at least three since last year alone. 

Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts bore the worst of it. A 42-kilometre stretch of road linking Betrawati to the Rasuwagadhi border crossing was washed out along with several concrete bridges, while eight operating hydropower plants with a combined capacity of 354 megawatts sustained........

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