KATHMANDU (Bernama-dpa-Xinhua): Foreign rescue teams have begun arriving in Nepal to assist search-and-rescue operations in areas devastated by flooding, reported German Press Agency.
A specialised tunnel rescue team from neighbouring India was ready to start work, said Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal in Kathmandu on Saturday.
Nepal's government has requested technical support for the search and rescue operations, Khanal said.
The teams are to help find workers trapped in tunnels at hydroelectric power stations along the flood-affected rivers.
According to the minister, the rescuers had to deploy to the area by land as the terrain makes helicopter operations difficult.
"Due to this complex geography and the impact of the floods, the search and rescue operations have proved difficult,” Khanal stated.
Khanal denied that Nepal had rejected foreign aid, saying that international assistance was being sought based on specific operational needs. He stressed that the scale of the destruction was enormous.
"Help and support are needed not only during the rescue and relief phase, but above all during the reconstruction phase,” he added.
Meanwhile, Xinhua reported that China’s Emergency Management Ministry on Saturday dispatched five Chinese tunnel experts to Nepal to support rescue efforts at a hydropower plant tunnel, at the request of the Nepali government.
The experts took a helicopter from Gyirong, a county in southwest China's Xizang Region, arrived in the disaster-hit area of Nepal at 4.58 pm Beijing Time, and immediately joined the rescue operation on site.
An additional four tunnel experts were also dispatched to Nepal to further support the rescue efforts, according to the ministry.
-- BERNAMA-dpa-XINHUA
