By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Incessant rains in Nepal have unleashed floods and landslides that killed at least 10 people with seven missing during the last 24 hours, while disrupting transport, officials said on Saturday.
Most rivers in the Himalayan nation have swollen, spilling over roads and bridges, authorities said, after nearly a week’s delay in the retreat of South Asia’s annual monsoon rains brought torrential downpours across the region.
Police were working to clear debris and re-open roads to traffic after landslides blocked highways at 28 locations, police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki said.
The earliest let-up in the rains might not come until Sunday, said Binu Maharjan, a weather forecasting official in the capital, Kathmandu, who blamed a low-pressure system over parts of neighbouring India for this year’s extended rains.
“Heavy rains are likely to continue until Sunday morning and weather is likely to clear after that,” Maharjan told Reuters.
Most central and eastern areas had received moderate to extremely heavy rains, ranging from 50 mm (2 inches) to more than 200 mm (8 inches), she added, with moderate levels elsewhere.
International flights were operating but many domestic flights were disrupted, said Rinji Sherpa, a spokesperson for Kathmandu airport.
Roads and homes in the hill-ringed capital have been inundated after rivers overflowed with more than 200 mm (8 inches) of rain, authorities said.
The Koshi river in the southeast, which causes deadly floods in India’s eastern neighbouring state of Bihar almost every year, was running above the danger level at 450,000 cusecs, versus the normal figure of 150,000 cusecs, one official said.
The river level was still rising, added Ram Chandra Tiwari, the area’s top bureaucrat.
A cusec is a measurement of water flow equivalent to one cubic foot a second.
Hundreds of people die in the monsoon season every year in the landslides and flash floods common in the mountainous nation.
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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