The severe flooding and landslide recorded on Wednesday in northern Nepal, in a region near the border with China, which have so far left nearly 180 dead and hundreds of people missing according to the latest count by the country's authorities, could have their origin in "the collapse of a glacier" located upstream, according to information released this Thursday by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
The agency has stated in a brief note that, although it initially reported that the disaster could have been triggered by an earthquake of magnitude 4.4 on the open Richter scale, "additional analyses of a long period of seismic waves indicate that the seismic energy was generated by a collapse of a glacier in the debris flow."
"The USGS has determined that the seismic event was a collapse of a glacier and a debris flow that caused subsequent catastrophic impacts downstream," the agency emphasized, before noting that satellite images support the conclusion that "no earthquake" occurred in the area that could be linked to this catastrophe.
For its part, the Nepal Police reported this Thursday, through a statement, that so far 182 bodies have been located in seven districts of the country. In turn, the National Disaster Risk Management and Reduction Authority, citing data from Nepalese tourism authorities, has raised the number of missing travelers in the affected areas to 579, of which 466 are foreigners and 113 are of Nepalese nationality.