A lake formed by a landslide on the Nepal-China border began overflowing on Friday, threatening areas already devastated by this week's flash floods and halting rescue efforts, authorities said.
"We have received a notice saying that the lake has broken its banks," Narendra Pariyar, the most senior bureaucrat of the hard-hit Rasuwa district, told DW. "We can see that the level of water in the river is rising."
Residents in Nepal's border district of Rasuwa were seen fleeing up hillsides as they braced for a surge in river levels, Reuters reported.
Due to the risk of the lake bursting, all Chinese rescue personnel were told to withdraw to a safe area, state broadcaster CCTV said. Nepal authorities also paused rescue operations for the next 90 minutes, an army official told Reuters.
Rescuers have been racing to find hundreds of people still missing, two days after a catastrophic flash flood struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and China.
