Floods leave 6 dead, 11 missing in Nepal

"The dead bodies of six people -- three men and three women, have been found while 11 people are still missing as flood triggered by overnight rainfalls on the local Kailash stream swept 22 houses at Sainibazar area of the rural municipality," Police Inspector Ramesh Dutta Awasthi, told Xinhua over telephone from the incident site on Wednesday. "Search for those missing is undergoing."

An officer bearer of the rural municipality said that most of those who were swept away by the stream are the family members of people who were running shops in the area.

"Many people could not escape the flood as they were asleep in the mid-night," Jhankar Bahadur Saud, chairperson of the rural municipality, one of the local governments of Nepal, told Xinhua.

According to the police, the area usually sees high levels of rainfalls in the monsoon every year. But, police quoted locals as saying that it is the first time that the area saw such massive floods on the stream in the last 37 years.

The flood not only caused loss of lives but also destroyed the private and public properties, according to the police. "The entire settlement of Sainibazar area is now completely damaged," said Awasthi.

Local farm lands, roads, a bride and a hydropower project developed on the stream, have also been badly damaged, according to the police.