KATHMANDU: At least 63 people were missing in Nepal on Friday after a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept two buses off a highway and plunged them into a river, authorities said.
Dozens of search and rescue personnel were combing the site for survivors of the accident in the central district of Chitwan, district official Khimananda Bhusal told AFP.
Bhusal said that the buses were carrying at least 66 people between them but three passengers had been able to swim and escape as they crashed into the Trishuli river and were now being treated in hospital.
"We are not sure of the total number because the buses could have picked up others on the road," he said.
"The river has swollen and no one else has been found yet," he added.
Bhusal said that the survivors were out of danger and one had been discharged from the hospital.
The force of the landslide pushed the buses over concrete crash barriers and down a steep embankment into the waterway, at least 30 metres (100 feet) from the road.
Search and rescue teams on rafts gathered on the riverbank were struggling to scour the muddy waterway due to fierce currents made worse by the rains.
Hours after the search began, they had yet to find any trace of the vehicles or their remaining occupants.
"The teams are trying but river's flow is very strong. They have not found anything yet," police spokesman Kumar Neupane told AFP.
The accident took place before dawn along the Narayanghat-Mugling highway, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu.
One bus was heading from Kathmandu to Gaur in Rautahat district in southern Nepal and the other was en route to the capital from southern Birgunj.
A driver was killed in a separate accident on the same road after a boulder hit his bus. He died as he was being treated at a hospital.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said he was "deeply saddened" by the accident in a post on social media platform X.
