At least 200 dead after the latest floods in Nepal

Floods and landslides caused by torrential rains in Nepal, especially in its capital Kathmandu, left at least 200 people dead, the Nepalese Home Ministry announced Monday.

"According to our latest figures, 200 people have died, 127 were injured and 26 are still missing," ministry spokesman Rishi Ram Tiwari told AFP.

The previous toll was 192 dead and 31 missing.

Nepal's emergency teams are continuing their search and rescue work Monday among destroyed houses in Kathmandu.

Entire neighborhoods of the Nepalese capital were flooded after the heaviest rains to fall in the east and center of the country in more than two decades. The capital is temporarily cut off by landslides that blocked roads.

At least 35 of the dead were buried alive when a landslide buried vehicles on a road south of the capital, police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki added.

According to the ministry, they are currently working to rescue numerous people who were trapped on the roads.

Meanwhile, rescuers are clearing the mud from the worst-affected neighborhoods around Kathmandu, Many of them are unauthorized slum settlements.

The Bagmati River and its tributaries, which cross Kathmandu, overflowed and flooded riverside neighborhoods as well as swept away vehicles, after midnight on Saturday.

"It's a nightmare," said Indra Prasad Timilsina, who lives in one of the affected neighborhoods. "I have never suffered such extreme flooding in my life," she confessed.

According to the Army, more than 4,000 people have been rescued.

The Kathmandu Valley got 9.44 inches of rain in 24 hours, between Friday and Saturday morning, the Nepalese weather agency said.

This is the heaviest rainfall in the capital since at least 1970, it added.

The hydrology and meteorology department reported that, according to preliminary data, weather stations in 14 districts registered unprecedented rainfall in the 24 hours leading up to Saturday morning.