The death toll from the August 26 Bhotekoshi flood has reached 1,377, with 5,130 people still listed as missing, according to a government update issued at 11:00 am on Thursday, September 10, by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA).
The missing figure was revised down after 104 previously unidentified recovered bodies were formally identified and removed from the missing list, officials said. Of those still missing, 587 are foreign nationals.
District-by-district tollOf the 1,377 confirmed deaths, Chitwan has recorded the highest number at 364, followed by Nawalparasi (Bardaghat Susta Purba) with 228, Nawalparasi (Bardaghat Susta Paschim) with 222, Nuwakot with 198, Rasuwa with 178, Gorkha with 77, Dhading with 70, Tanahun with 38, and two people who died while receiving treatment in Kathmandu.
Within Rasuwa specifically the district nearest the flood's origin point and among the hardest hit the missing include 1,393 local residents, 1,286 people from other districts who were in the area at the time, 45 Nepali Army personnel, 12 Nepal Police personnel, 26 Armed Police Force personnel, 25 government officials, and 73 employees of financial institutions and banks.
Clearing up a discrepancy in this week's figuresNepali media portals reported sharply different missing-person totals earlier this week a Department of Tourism notice on September 6-7 put the missing count at 775, including 587 foreign nationals, while NDRRMA's own daily updates over the same period consistently showed a much higher figure, ranging from roughly 4,994 to 5,326. These appear to be two different official counts rather than a genuine contradiction: the lower figure reflects a narrower registration channel (likely limited to specific categories such as registered tourists), while the NDRRMA figure is the comprehensive daily tally covering all missing persons local residents, out-of-district Nepalis, security personnel, government staff, and foreign nationals combined. The 587 foreign-national figure has remained constant across both counts throughout the past week, which supports this reading, but ICN has not obtained direct confirmation from NDRRMA of exactly what the Department of Tourism's narrower figure represents, and this should be confirmed before either figure is used without the other for context in future coverage.
Why this keeps changing, and what it means for readers
The missing-person total has declined gradually and unevenly since the disaster from around 5,326 on September 8, to roughly 5,132 on September 9, to 5,130 on September 10 reflecting the slow pace of both recovery operations and, separately, the forensic identification process ICN has reported on separately, given Nepal's limited DNA-testing laboratory capacity. Readers should expect these figures to continue shifting, sometimes only slightly, as recovery and identification work continues, rather than treating any single day's count as final.
For diaspora readers, the 587 figure for missing foreign nationals reported from more than 35 countries has not changed materially in over a week even as the overall count has moved, which may indicate that identification and repatriation processes specifically affecting foreign nationals are proceeding more slowly than the domestic caseload, though ICN has not confirmed this interpretation with officials directly.
