Another Chinese survivor rescued from Nepal tunnel where South Koreans worked

A Chinese worker has been rescued alive from a 225-meter tunnel at a Nepalese hydropower project where nine South Koreans worked, raising new possibilities for planning their rescue.

The rescue came 10 days after large landslides and floods hit Nepal. Nepal Army teams found the man in a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower construction site in Rasuwa, in north-central Bagmati province. Nepal Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said the survivor was brought out on the fifth.

The Kathmandu Post identified the rescued Chinese national as Lu Haitao. South Korea’s overseas emergency relief team, known as KDRT, separately said it had rescued a Chinese survivor from a tunnel near the project’s upper weir dam and recovered one body whose nationality was unknown. The rescue site was confirmed as a location where South Koreans had worked, a fact expected to affect plans for reaching them.

The operation marked the ninth person rescued by KDRT since its creation in 2007. The team rescued eight people during the 2023 earthquake in Türkiye. Nepalese rescuers have continued searching several hydropower tunnels where hundreds of workers are believed to be trapped.

The Nepal Army also reported rescuing a woman in her 60s from the second floor of a four-story house buried in flood debris in Bagmati’s Nuwakot district. She was being flown to Kathmandu.

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We rescued one Chinese person from the tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower plant construction site.