2 people rescued alive from tunnel after deadly Nepal-Tibet flash flood
LONDON -- Two people have been rescued from a hydropower tunnel at the Trishuli 3A construction site, Nepal's Army confirmed Friday after posting videos and images from the scene on Facebook.
Nepalese lawmaker Shri Ram Neupane, an engineer who has been involved in the search operations, also posted about the two rescues on his Facebook page, including photos and videos from the scene.
He identified the two workers rescued as Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan.
In an earlier Facebook post, Neupane said rescuers had heard voices from people trapped inside the tunnel.
"It has been confirmed that more than one person's voice has been heard from inside," Neupane wrote in the post. "When the rescue team said, 'Don't panic, we are rescuing,' a response of 'yes' was received from inside."
After being rescued, Sah, a mechanical foreman, said in a video published by the Nepali Army on Friday that his responsibility was to save the lives of the others in the tunnel because he was in the control room.
"I told everyone that there was a big accident on the big dam, and asked everyone to run and in the end, I ran out of time and could not run out," Sah said in the video, which was translated from Nepali.
At least 557 workers are missing from the Trishuli 3A hydropower projects along the Trishuli River, with about 115 believed to be trapped in the tunnel, according to the Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal.
Nepal's Communication Minister Bikram Timilsina said officials remain hopeful that more workers will be rescued. "We are waiting for the rescue of more and more people," Timilsina wrote on his Facebook page.
Sah said there seemed to be three or four more people still stuck in the tunnel, and possibly even more, as the tunnel is long and some may have been swept deeper inside.
Holding onto hope, Sah said he was chanting mantras while he was trapped.
The death toll following last week's unprecedented flash flood at the Nepal-Tibet border has climbed to 1,287, with an additional 4,216 people believed to still be missing as of Thursday, officials said.
Those figures increased from 1,114 deaths and 3,916 missing people, respectively, a day earlier, according to Nepal's National Disaster Management Authority.
Chinese state media have reported an additional 16 deaths and 546 missing people in Tibet, bringing the total death toll to 1,268 and the number of missing people on both sides of the border to 4,762.
About 70 Americans are unaccounted for in the Nepal-Tibet border region, and 17 Americans impacted have made their way to safety, U.S. State Department said on Friday.
Relief and rescue efforts are continuing, with almost all communication towers restored and nearly 12,000 people rescued through international and domestic aid.
Additionally, almost 21,500 security personnel have been mobilized in an effort to speed up search and rescue operations, with more than 5,000 people receiving treatment for injuries, officials said.
Nepali Prime Minister Shah said earlier this week that his government would begin focusing on "rehabilitation" as the length of time since the initial disaster grows.
ABC News' Anna Bourke contributed to this report.
