29th August 2026 – (Beijing) Seven people have been confirmed dead and five hundred and fifty-four remain missing after a mudslide devastated Gyirong Port on Tibet’s border with Nepal, as rescue teams pressed rubble searches and netting-style sweeps across the worst-hit zone on 29th August.
Xinhua reported that the disaster struck at about 10.30am on 26th August when mudslides on the Nepalese side of the frontier cascaded into Gyirong County in Shigatse City, inflicting heavy casualties at the land port. By 1.00am on 29th August, authorities had raised the confirmed death toll on the Chinese side to seven while the number unaccounted for stood at five hundred and fifty-four. A fire and rescue contingent reached the severely damaged port area on the afternoon of 28th August.
On 29th August, the Ministry of Emergency Management and the National Fire and Rescue Administration said a China Rescue Team unit from the Sichuan fire and rescue land search branch was working inside the port disaster zone, picking through wreckage despite treacherous terrain. Crews were conducting detailed surveys and systematic netting searches, maintaining round-the-clock operations without pause.
Officials said more than two thousand one hundred rescue workers were now on site, alongside eighty-six specialists from natural resources agencies carrying monitoring equipment to inspect slopes and roads for further geological risks. A five-person observation post was watching a barrier lake upstream in real time to guard against secondary disasters, while five hundred and five firefighters and township cadres had been sent to the front line. Engineers had reopened about one kilometre of damaged road as relief efforts continued in orderly fashion.
The Chinese figures form part of a wider Himalayan catastrophe. Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said on 28th August that flash floods in the country’s north had left five hundred and seventy-nine people dead and one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four missing by 7.00pm local time. Earlier reports said two residents of Resuo Village near Gyirong Port had been pulled alive from the debris as international teams struggled with cut roads, deep mud and the threat of further slides along the shared mountain border.