According to a September 2026 report by Lude Society, during the Nepal floods the CCP dispatched the People's Liberation Army to the border for logistical support, attempting to exploit the disaster to gain border interests and leading the narrative that attributed the floods to climate change.
On the tenth day after the disaster at the Gyirong Port border, Nepalese rescue forces successfully rescued Chinese worker Lu Haitao from a tunnel buried by a mudslide, demonstrating the scale and persistence of local rescue operations.
On September 5, 2026, a Chinese worker who had been trapped for 10 days in a tunnel at the Chushuri Hydropower Station amid flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border was successfully rescued by Nepalese military rescue personnel and airlifted by helicopter for medical treatment.
On September 5 local time, a joint rescue team made up of Nepalese military personnel and South Korean disaster rescue experts rescued 49-year-old Chinese worker Lu Haitao, from Anyang, Henan, who had been trapped for 11 days, from a 225-meter-long hydropower station tunnel in Rasuwa in northern Nepal. His condition is stable, and Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Zhang Maoming subsequently went to the hospital to visit him.
Nepal police announced on September 5 that as of local time September 5, 1,344 bodies of victims had been recovered from the disaster, with another 4,898 people missing; approximately 900 workers at 12 hydropower projects across the country are missing, of whom about 500 are trapped inside tunnels.
After Chinese workers were rescued on September 5, state media outlets such as Chengdu Economic Daily and Tibet Daily reported with headlines like "Chinese and South Korean experts and the Nepalese army have been working hard." Red Star News, when citing local reporters, added a statement about Chinese tunnel experts participating in the rescue. However, reports from the Nepalese military and foreign media only mentioned the Nepalese military and South Korean experts, sparking questions about China grabbing credit.
According to a program on Luther Society, officials last updated the casualty figures for the Nepal earthquake on September 5, reporting 43 dead and 519 missing, totaling 562, and have not released any specific casualty updates since then.
Nepalese army, armed police and rescue personnel rescued two stranded engineers inside the tunnel of the Upper Chhuksikhola 3A hydropower plant; the two were subsequently taken to a hospital in Kathmandu.
Nepal's disaster management department has released its latest statistics, showing that the floods have killed at least 1,259 people and left more than 5,000 missing.
On September 3, 2026, Australian media and the HiRISK organization released an investigation indicating that satellites had recorded signs of glacial instability weeks before the mudslide disaster on the Nepal-Tibet border, and disclosed that China significantly lagged in sharing cross-border hydrological early warning data.
Surviving workers at a Nepali hydropower project said that before the flood arrived, workers noticed something abnormal and demanded to evacuate the tunnel, but were stopped by the Chinese supervisor. The supervisor said they should go out first to check, then fled on his own and never returned, leaving a large number of workers trapped in the tunnel.
According to the Associated Press, local rescuers and the government in Nepal have set up simple cableways in the landslide-stricken area to send rescued residents back to their affected homes to see whether they can salvage remaining belongings.
A surviving worker at Nepal's Chhuksuli 3A Hydropower Plant describes conditions before and after the flood, with multiple workers trapped in an underground tunnel.
On September 2, 2026, surviving workers at Nepal's Trishuli 3A hydropower station told the media that before the flash flood arrived on August 26, workers had requested evacuation, but the Chinese national in charge ordered them to stay and keep working while he left first, leaving multiple workers trapped in the tunnel.
Nepal's immigration department found in electronic records that on the day of the flood, 89 people departed for Tibet and 4 were registered as entering Nepal; the last transaction occurred at 8:35:03.