Nepal-China flood rescue on hold as lake breaks banks

A lake formed by a landslide on the Nepal-China border began overflowing on Friday, threatening areas already devastated by this week's flash floods and halting rescue efforts, authorities said.

"We have received a notice saying that the lake has broken its banks," Narendra Pariyar, the most senior bureaucrat of the hard-hit Rasuwa district, told DW. "We can see that the level of water in the river is rising."

Residents in Nepal's border district of Rasuwa were seen fleeing up hillsides as they braced for a surge in river levels, Reuters reported.

Due to the risk of the lake bursting, all Chinese rescue personnel were told to withdraw to a safe area, state broadcaster CCTV said. Nepal authorities also paused rescue operations for at least 90 minutes, an army official told Reuters.

Rescuers have been racing to find hundreds of people still missing, two days after a catastrophic flash flood struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and China .

Nepal authorities said on Friday afternoon that the country's death toll had risen to 538, up from 390 a day earlier . China has updated its earlier count of three to five deaths in Tibet. The two countries said 977 people remained missing, including as many as 517 foreigners from more than 30 countries.

The International Red Cross estimated that over 93,000 people have been directly affected by the catastrophe and are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

"We're of course very concerned about a secondary flood," said spokesman David Fischer at a press briefing in Geneva, adding that Red Cross relief trucks had been blocked by the lake which formed following the landslide.