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Nepal Recovers First Body from Buses Swept away by Landslide

A person crosses a suspension bridge during monsoon rainfall in Kathmandu, Nepal, 11 July 2024. EPA/NARENDRA SHRESTHA
A person crosses a suspension bridge during monsoon rainfall in Kathmandu, Nepal, 11 July 2024. EPA/NARENDRA SHRESTHA
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Nepal Recovers First Body from Buses Swept away by Landslide

A person crosses a suspension bridge during monsoon rainfall in Kathmandu, Nepal, 11 July 2024. EPA/NARENDRA SHRESTHA
A person crosses a suspension bridge during monsoon rainfall in Kathmandu, Nepal, 11 July 2024. EPA/NARENDRA SHRESTHA

Nepali rescue teams on Saturday recovered the first body from around 50 people missing after monsoon rains triggered a landslide that swept two buses off a highway and into a river.
The force of Friday's landslide in central Chitwan district pushed the vehicles over concrete crash barriers and down a steep embankment, at least 30 meters (100 feet) from the road.
"One body has been found about 55 kilometers (35 miles) from the accident site," police spokesman Kumar Neupane told AFP.
District official Khimananda Bhusal told AFP that roughly 50 people remained unaccounted for, revising down the number of missing from the 63 reported by authorities on Friday.
"It is hard to confirm the total number because we don't know if the buses stopped to add or remove passengers along the way," he said.
Dozens of rescuers spent hours struggling to comb the raging Trishuli river with rafts, sensor equipment and dive teams to find any trace of the passengers or the vehicles.
Fierce currents made worse by this week's torrential downpours have hampered their efforts so far.
"We will employ all our abilities for search and rescue despite the water levels, current and the water's muddiness," Chitwan district chief Indra Dev Yadav told AFP.
The accident happened before dawn on Friday along the Narayanghat-Mugling highway, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Kathmandu.
One bus was heading from the capital to Gaur in Rautahat district in southern Nepal, and the other was en route to Kathmandu 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.
Deadly crashes are common in the Himalayan republic because of poorly constructed roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.
Nearly 2,400 people lost their lives on Nepal's roads in the 12 months to April, according to government figures.
Twelve people were killed and 24 injured in an accident in January when a bus heading to Kathmandu from Nepalgunj fell into a river.
Road travel becomes deadlier during the annual monsoon season as rains trigger landslides and floods across the mountainous country.
Monsoon rains across South Asia from June to September offer respite from the summer heat and are crucial to replenishing water supplies, but also bring widespread death and destruction.
Floods, landslides and lightning strikes have killed 88 people across the country since the monsoon began in June, according to police figures.

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France, UK, US and Israeli Leaders Slam Settlers' Attack on West Bank Village

The Palestinian village of Burqa is seen as an Israeli flag is placed in the Jewish West Bank outpost of Homesh, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The Palestinian village of Burqa is seen as an Israeli flag is placed in the Jewish West Bank outpost of Homesh, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
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France, UK, US and Israeli Leaders Slam Settlers' Attack on West Bank Village

The Palestinian village of Burqa is seen as an Israeli flag is placed in the Jewish West Bank outpost of Homesh, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The Palestinian village of Burqa is seen as an Israeli flag is placed in the Jewish West Bank outpost of Homesh, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said on Friday that he condemned an attack by Israeli settlers on a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.

"We condemn this situation," said Sejourne, speaking alongside his British counterpart David Lammy at a news conference in Jerusalem.

For his part, British foreign minister David Lammy said on Friday the UK strongly condemns the attacks by the Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.
"The scenes overnight, of the burning and the torching of buildings, of the Molotov cocktails thrown at cars, of the widespread rampage and chasing of people from their homes, is abhorrent, and I condemn it in the strongest of terms," Lammy said at a press conference in Israel.

Also, Israeli leaders on Friday roundly condemned the deadly settler rampage in a rare Israeli denunciation of the settler violence, which started growing more common since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The settler riot in the village of Jit, near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, killed one Palestinian and badly injured others late Thursday, Palestinian health officials said. Residents interviewed by The Associated Press said at least a hundred masked settlers entered the village, shot live ammunition at Palestinians, burned homes and cars and damaged water tankers. Video showed flames engulfing the small village, which residents said was left to defend itself without military help for two hours.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he took the riots “seriously” and that Israelis who carried out criminal acts would be prosecuted. He issued what appeared to be a call for settlers to stand down.
“Those who fight terrorism are the army and the security forces, and no one else,” he said.
President Isaac Herzog also condemned the attack, as did Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said the settlers had “attacked innocent people.” He added they did not “represent the values" of settler communities.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, as the heartland of a future state, a position with wide international backing.
Rights groups say that arrests for settler violence are rare, and prosecutions even rarer. Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz newspaper reported in 2022 that based on statistics from the Israeli police, charges were pressed in only 3.8% of cases of settler violence, with most cases being opened and closed without any action being taken.
It was unclear why the Jit attack yielded such a strong rebuke from Israeli leaders. A similar settler riot in the village of Al-Mughayyir in April went without comparable mention from the authorities. The Jit attack comes as Israel is under heightened international scrutiny over its role in ceasefire talks with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators in Doha, yet another attempt to broker an end to the 10-month-old war.
The French foreign minister and the British foreign secretary were also in Israel on Friday for meetings with diplomatic officials.
The US has broadly condemned settler violence and the expansion of Israel’s West Bank settlements.
US Ambassador Jack Lew wrote on the social media platform X on Friday that he was “appalled” by the attack, and the White House National Security Council called violent settler attacks “unacceptable.”
”Israeli authorities must take measures to protect all communities from harm, this includes intervening to stop such violence, and holding all perpetrators of such violence to account," it said in a statement.
Ultra-orthodox Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel called on Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency to investigate those involved and said the riot ran against Jewish values and harmed the “settlement enterprise.”