Category World News

Heavy rains have resulted in severe flooding and landslides in Nepal and India’s eastern Himalayan city of Darjeeling in the past few days.

Dozens of people have been killed in landslides in Nepal’s eastern hilly district of Ilam, which borders India. Local media reported that 41 families have been displaced in Nepal.

However, the government of Nepal’s interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki was praised for its response to the floods. Experts credited it with keeping deaths and destruction to a minimum.

Here is what we know.

How much rain has Nepal had?

Heavy downpours began on October 3, and data from the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) show that some parts of Nepal experienced heavy rainfall. While the overall rainfall was slightly lower than last year, the destruction has still been bad because of “ultra-localised” heavy rains.

Pawan Bhattarai, an assistant professor at the civil engineering department of Kathmandu-based Tribhuvan University, told Al Jazeera that several districts in the central-eastern Terai plains and eastern hills bore the brunt of the storm, with weather stations in Rautahat and Ilam recording more than 330mm and 300mm of rain, respectively, on Saturday and Sunday.

Rainfall is normally considered extremely heavy if there is more than 150mm in 24 hours.

In the capital, Kathmandu, some districts received slightly more than 145mm of rain on Sunday compared with roughly 240mm in late September last year, when Kathmandu Valley experienced its heaviest deluge since 2002. Some parts of Kathmandu recorded as much as 322.2mm of rain last year, when the floods killed more than 200 people.

What caused the floods and landslides this year?

Various factors triggered the devastating floods this year.

Monsoon winds

Bhattarai explained that the flooding and landslides were an outcome of “an exceptionally intense and concentrated monsoon downpour”, which was caused by moisture-laden monsoon winds entering Nepal from the Bay of Bengal through the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

As a result, very high amounts of rain fell in a short period of time in ultra-localised areas. Some areas received a lot of rainfall over a short duration, while other parts remained largely dry.

Topography

Compounding this, the topography of some regions in the country is not suited to heavy downpours, Bhattarai said. “The massive volume of water overwhelmed the flat plains of districts like Rautahat, Bara and Parsa, causing widespread flooding.”

These three districts are in the Madhesh province in the mid-south of Nepal, bordering India. They are situated on the Terai plains – a flat, arable area – making it vulnerable to flooding because they have little to no elevation to redirect floodwater.

“Simultaneously, the same intense rainfall destabilised the steep slopes of hilly districts like Ilam, triggering the fatal landslides. In contrast, other areas like Kathmandu received significantly less rain, highlighting the localised nature of this extreme weather event,” he added.

Poor infrastructure

“Unscientific infrastructure development – such as road expansions that destabilise slopes – and encroachment on natural landscapes have amplified the damage,” Bhattarai said.

He explained that the recurring landslides on the Narayangadh-Mugling highway have been exacerbated by inadequate planning, poorly designed roadwork and a lack of proper safeguards.

The Narayangadh-Mugling highway in central Nepal experiences landslides fairly frequently, with the last one reported on September 23, causing regular traffic disruptions.

Climate change

While the amount of rain that fell in Nepal was not unusually high this year, the increased frequency of intense weather in the country is most likely linked to climate change, Bhattarai said.

“Such extreme monsoon events are highly unusual and a major concern. This pattern of back-to-back intense flooding – last September and again this year – is consistent with the effects of climate change, which is intensifying the hydrological cycle and making severe weather events more frequent.”

How has the government responded to the flooding?

Nepal has been contending with a difficult political situation in recent weeks.

On September 8, protests erupted in Kathmandu and other cities against corruption and nepotism. These “Gen Z” protests led by young people resulted in violence, numerous deaths and, ultimately, the resignation of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. The army was deployed, and former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, 73, was chosen as interim PM.

She has been praised for the interim government’s preemptive response to the floods. Experts say the government responded promptly to weather forecasts from the meteorological department, issuing early warnings, ordering road closures and halting traffic on main roads and highways in advance of the flooding.

The actions that won appreciation in particular included:

• Police in Kathmandu announced on loudspeakers that areas outside the city were vulnerable to flooding and landslides, and urged people not to leave the city.
• Energy Minister Kulman Ghising, who oversees the Ministry of Urban Development, inspected the highways that were badly damaged by the floods last year. Ghising issued a directive to restrict vehicular movement across these routes.
• The government stationed technical personnel and excavators in advance in vulnerable areas.
• A two-day national holiday was declared on Sunday and Monday as a precautionary measure.
• Army personnel were dispatched to help people move their belongings to other areas.

Damage was still extensive, however, said Bhattarai. “These efforts continue to face significant logistical challenges. Widespread damage to critical infrastructure has inherently hindered rebuilding and relief operations. While the political will for a coordinated response was present, the sheer scale of the physical destruction remains a major obstacle to recovery,” he said.

How could the disaster response be improved?

“While timely warnings and evacuation systems can significantly reduce human casualties from floods, this event highlights a critical gap in mitigating landslide fatalities, which are far more sudden and deadly,” Bhattarai said.

“To prevent future disasters, a major shift in policy and practice is urgently needed. This must prioritise comprehensive watershed management, focusing on stabilising slopes and managing water run-off, which has been a persistently neglected area in our current approach to disaster risk reduction.”

How does this compare with the government’s response last year?

The interim government’s response has been praised by many, including Sumana Shrestha, a minister in the previous government. She said the interim government performed much better than the Oli government’s response last year, The Kathmandu Post reported.

When the floods hit Nepal last year, Oli was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He was criticised for not returning home to deal with the flooding.

When he returned, he said it was pointless to criticise the government for any delays in rescue operations, arguing that even weather forecasters could not precisely predict the locations of landslides.

However, Shanti Mahat, a spokesperson for the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), cautioned against drawing quick conclusions about the previous year’s response as rainfall had been higher. She added that a smaller amount of rain might have prevented flooding altogether.

Furthermore, Anil Pokhrel, the former executive director of NDRRMA, said while some precautions were taken last year, government orders to close roads and halt traffic were not fully enforced.

“Last year, too, we had decided to close roads to reduce risk, but because those decisions were not enforced, the country suffered heavy human losses,” Pokhrel told The Kathmandu Post.

This year, the public had memories of last year’s floods and took government orders seriously. “The fresh experiences from last year made it easier for the government this time to make quick decisions, which helped keep the damage lower,” Pokhrel said.

“This time, people seem to have learned from last year’s experience, which made the situation somewhat easier to handle,” Mahat told The Kathmandu Post.

What is the current situation in Nepal?

The amount of rain in Nepal had reduced significantly by Tuesday.

Districts in Kathmandu have received less than 5mm of rain in the 24 hours since Monday. The highest amount of rain recorded on Tuesday was more than 84mm in the Marin Khola station at Kusuntar in the Sindhuli district in the southeastern hills of Bagmati province.

What happened in India?

The downpours also resulted in deaths and destruction across the border in northeastern India.

Officials said 28 people were killed in storms. The city of Darjeeling in West Bengal was hit the hardest.

“Landslides have been reported from 35 locations in the hills of Darjeeling and more than 100 houses have been destroyed,” Praween Prakash, a West Bengal state police official, told the AFP news agency.

After the final death toll was reached at 67, the search for the remains of those who died in an Indonesian school collapse has been postponed as families continue to search for bodies.

When Israel started its attack on October 7, 2023, nearly all of us in Gaza had the sense that this was going to be brutal.

Yet, no one thought it would continue for two long years. No one thought that the world would allow this to happen for so long.

I was 16 years old when Israel launched the 2014 attack on Gaza. The aggression lasted 51 days, and it felt like a lifetime then. Now, the 2014 assault feels like a blink of an eye.

I don’t remember at what point I felt like there was no escape from this genocidal onslaught, that I could not even imagine its end. Was it when the Israelis massacred hundreds at the al-Ahli Hospital, or when they invaded al-Shifa Hospital, or when I was displaced to Rafah the first time, or when they invaded and destroyed Rafah, sending us fleeing for our lives, or when northern Gaza was wiped out, or when Israel breached the ceasefire agreement and resumed the genocide, or when famine took hold in Gaza?

Last year, we marked the first anniversary of the genocide on the road. That day, the Israeli army issued another forced displacement order for eastern Khan Younis, and we had to flee to al-Mawasi along with thousands of other people.

This year, we haven’t gone far. We are still displaced, living in a tent in al-Mawasi and starving.

We are still in the same circle of death and destruction, only the brutality has escalated. The list of martyrs has grown longer, the spectrum of misery has broadened, and the Israeli methods of torture have diversified.

The Israelis now don’t just want to kill us. They have gotten creative about it. They have designed various death traps, giving us a choice in how to die.

When Israel halted all aid entry to Gaza on March 2, launching another wave of starvation, while already massacring civilians around the clock, I thought that was the ultimate level of evil. I was wrong. Starvation was just the beginning.

In late May, the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation opened its food distribution points, where Palestinians got to participate in real-life “hunger games”. They would be made to compete for a few boxes of food before getting shot by Israeli soldiers and foreign mercenaries.

When children started dying of malnutrition, Israel started allowing commercial trucks in so markets would get full of food that no one could afford.

When the Israeli government pressed for the conquest of Gaza City, the army deployed explosive robots to help wreak total destruction. These military vehicles packed with tonnes of explosives would pulverise not only whole blocks, but also the families living in them.

T S Eliot once wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” And yet, we, the humans of Gaza, have had to bear an unbearable reality every day for two years now.

It has been a horror after a horror. Israel has committed more massacres than I can mention. Yet, I can’t forget when Israel killed my friend Mohammad Hamo, a young Palestinian writer, alongside 200 members of his family and relatives. Or when Israel killed 112 starving people, as they waited for flour, in what is now known as the Flour Massacre. Or when, on March 18, the Israeli army resumed the genocide, killing 400 people, 100 of them children, in a couple of hours. Or when Israeli soldiers executed 15 Palestinian paramedics in Rafah.

Gaza has become a place where there is no distinction between a civilian and a combatant, between places and people protected under humanitarian law and military targets allowed under the laws of war. Here, the doctor and the patient are murdered; the journalist and the witness; the teacher and the pupil; the mother and the unborn child.

The concept of life has lost its meaning in Gaza. We are not living, we are surviving; we are in a constant battle to escape death.

My family and I have been displaced nine times. Each time, we have struggled to set up our tent, to build a toilet, to create shade to fight the sun, then to cover up to fight the wind, then to isolate to protect from the cold and rain.

In July, I sneaked out to my neighbourhood in east Khan Younis after a partial withdrawal of the Israeli army. All the way, I was walking over rubble that littered every inch of the razed streets. As I arrived on my street, I couldn’t tell where my house was, at first. The Israeli army had scrambled my entire neighbourhood. The scene was apocalyptic. Everything looked grey; there was no colour, no life, no standing building.

When I returned to our tent, I showed my mother the pictures I took. “Who do they think we are? China? Russia?” she shouted as she sobbed. “We didn’t even pick up a fork to defend ourselves”.

The next day, I went to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, the least damaged area in the enclave. I went there because I genuinely feared for my sanity. I felt I was losing my mind. I needed to see some buildings, paved roads, and trees; the scenes of my neighbourhood were haunting me. I wanted to prove to myself that I can recognise colours other than grey.

Gaza is small and densely populated, but it has always been incredibly diverse in its landscape, each part of it having its own distinctive history, culture and rhythm.

Gaza City was the most vibrant part, where many of the famous markets, universities, and high-rise buildings were. It was also where the old city was, with its historical sites, mosques and churches. Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya, in the far north, were more laid back, quieter. There, the urban landscape mixed with the rural; a lot of our food was grown there. Khan Younis and Rafah in the south were also distinct; their eastern parts morphed into farmland.

The refugee camps in the north, centre and south – from Jabalia through Bureij, to Khan Younis camp, were the most densely built, but also most resilient and diverse. They were a miniature of historic Palestine, as most of their population were descendants of the 1948 Nakba’s refugees, from Jaffa to Bir as-Sab’.

The Israeli army razed all of that, creating the same landscape of destruction all around Gaza. Rafah is a reflection of Beit Hanoon; Khan Younis, a copy of Gaza City. It is like holding a mirror against another mirror, generating endless reflections of the same picture.

These are the same images that people around the world see every day, feel sickened by, and find too much to stomach. Many would look away or scroll down. Indeed, humans cannot bear very much reality.

And yet, we, the humans of Gaza, cannot look away or scroll down. We have been stuck in this reality for what feels like an eternity. And whenever we thought we had seen the worst, worse would happen.

I wish I could just check out and escape this genocidal reality to somewhere I could live and not just exist, somewhere I could chase dreams and not be haunted by nightmares, somewhere I could get food or water without fearing death. Somewhere I can hope again, where I can be free. That is all I wish for.

After explosions tear through their neighborhoods, many children cling to the arms of rescuers with their shocked eyes.

Small bodies are instantly destroyed, homes are instantly destroyed, and youth’s innocence replaced by trauma in some images, which are too horrifying to depict.

These faces, who were once vibrant and full of life, sag and sag, becoming sagging and lifeless as hunger and loss take hold.

A child with a broken arm covered in plaster and lying on a hospital floor covered in blood is depicted in one of Ashraf Amra’s images, which were taken on May 21, 2024. The blood on the floor seeping closer to his uninjured shoulder as he fixedly gazes at the camera.

Following Israeli attacks on the Bureij refugee camp in Deir el-Balah, one of the injured Palestinians who was taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was him.

Women in Gaza also carry heavy loads, both physically and emotionally, including mothers, teachers, doctors, journalists, and caregivers. Some are influenced by their faith in churches or mosques.

After having previously experienced similar circumstances, the older generation is seeing displacement.

Inas Abu Maamar, 36, a Palestinian woman, poses with her 5-year-old niece Sally, who was killed in an Israeli attack on October 17, 2023, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Mohammad Salem, a photographer, was present at the hospital morgue that day.

He said the image “speaks a powerful and depressing moment,” and it “speaks to the general perception of what was happening in the Gaza Strip.”

People were perplexed, running, and worried about the fate of their loved ones, and this woman caught my attention as she held the young girl’s body and resisted to leave.

The image then won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award for capturing the heartbreaking pain and chaos experienced by those affected by the Gaza attacks.

Many of the men pictured are carrying heavy, shrouded bodies.

Young men and rescue workers, who frequently serve as first responders and civilians, brave the rubble.

Each man’s face reflects exhaustion, grief, and the urgent need to intervene in the chaos of the world, and each shrouded body reveals a tale of tragedy and sudden loss.

A man is seen carrying the body of a child who was killed overnight by Israeli bombing at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, according to an image taken by Omar Al-Qattaa.