65 American Tourists Missing in Deadly Flood Disaster

Navesh Chitrakar / REUTERS Sixty-five Americans are missing after a wall of water razed entire towns to the ground in the Himalayas, officials say.

More than 800 people are unaccounted for in Nepal , and 500 in China after a torrent of mud and water surged through a valley on the border, thought to have been caused by glacial collapse in the world’s highest mountain range.

The total death toll is not known as authorities, governments and tour groups scramble to establish who was in the area at the time, although the Guardian reports some local authorities put it north of 1,000.

At least 270 bodies have already been recovered from the scene, which covers the Trishuli, Lhende Khola, and Bhote Koshi rivers in and around the Rasuwa district, according to Nepal police.

Nepal Tourism Board spokesperson Sunil Sharma told the BBC that 655 tourists were unaccounted for, including 65 Americans, 127 Nepalis, 53 Ukrainians, 51 Malaysians, 35 Australians, and 33 Brits.

“We are coordinating with the relevant authorities for their search and rescue,” he said.

The U.S.

Embassy in Nepal offered its “heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the devastating floods,” adding that it is “working to account for U.S. citizens who may have been affected.” In Gyirong ⁠County in the autonomous Chinese region of Tibet, 558 people are missing, according to Chinese authorities.

The U.S.

Geological Survey believes that a massive sheet of glacier peeled off in Langtang National Park, a little under 40 miles from the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, triggering a 5.2 magnitude earthquake.

Speaking to Reuters , health worker Tula Bahadur BK said that “There is devastation everywhere we ​look.

The settlements next to ​the river have been completely swept away.

Five of my own relatives are missing.” Gut-wrenching images and videos have already circulated widely, including footage from the Gyirong border crossing between Nepal and Tibet that shows a huge border structure submerged by a wall of water in the blink of an eye.

“The road is completely swept away because of the flash flooding,” the owner of a tour company who had three of the missing Americans on his tour told CNN’s Out Front.