63 missing as Nepal landslide sweeps two buses into river

Nepal authorities yesterday evening temporarily halted the search for at least 63 people missing after a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept two buses off a highway and plunged them into a river.
Dozens of rescuers had been combing the site for survivors along a remote stretch of road in the central district of Chitwan before sunset forced them to abandon their efforts.
“It is dark now and it is not possible to continue the operation,” Kumar Neupane, spokesman for Nepal’s Armed Police Force, said.
District official Khimananda Bhusal said the buses were carrying at least 66 people between them, but three passengers had been able to escape as they crashed into the Trishuli river.
“We are not sure of the total number because the buses could have picked up others on the road,” he said. “The river has swollen and no one else has been found yet.”
Bhusal said that the survivors were out of danger and one had been discharged from the hospital. One said from his hospital bed that his two children and two grandchildren had been aboard one of the buses when it hit the water. “My son, my daughter, my grandchildren, all four are gone...only I am here,” Jugeshwor Ray Yadav, 45, said. “I gulped down some water, but somehow I swam. I swam and then caught a branch on the hill,” he said.
The force of the landslide pushed the buses over concrete crash barriers and down a steep embankment into the river, at least 100 feet from the road. Search and rescue teams on the riverbank spent the day struggling to scour the muddy waters due to fierce currents made worse by the rains.
Hours after the search began, they had yet to discover any trace of the vehicles or their remaining occupants. “The teams are trying but the river’s flow is very strong. They have not found anything,” Neupane, the police spokesman, said. The accident took place before dawn along the Narayanghat-Mugling highway, around 100km west of the capital Kathmandu. One bus was heading from Kathmandu to Gaur in Rautahat district in southern Nepal, and the other was en route to the capital from southern Birgunj.