Five-year-old Ishara Tamang lies in a hospital bed in Kathmandu, injured and separated from her family, after surviving the flashfloods that devastated Rasuwa district on the Nepal-Tibet border. She was rescued from the floodwaters in Khalte, a village in Rasuwa, after being trapped in a net, the Onlinekhabar news portal reported. Ishara told hospital staff: “My mother was swept away. I jumped and moved forward, then got trapped in the net.” The August 26 floods — which travelled downstream through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river system — have left a trail of destruction across northern and central Nepal, with the death toll crossing 700 on Sunday, while around 2,500 people are still missing.

Families, on Sunday, crowded hospitals searching for missing relatives as rescuers continued digging through mud and debris amid intermittent rainfall and renewed concerns over rising river levels.

Ishara was with her mother when the flood struck. The child was swept away, tried...