At least 54 people are missing after two passenger buses were swept away by a mudslide into the rain-swollen Trishuli River near Simaltal along the Narayanghat-Muglin road section in the wee hours on Friday.

According to Indradev Yadav, chief district officer of Chitwan, a Kathmandu-bound Angel Deluxe Bus and a Ganapati Deluxe Bus, en route to Gaur of Rautahat district from Kathmandu, were pushed into the river by the mudslide at around 3:30 am.

Based on preliminary inquiry, Police said 24 people were on board the Angel Deluxe Bus travelling to Kathmandu. They included 14 Nepalis, seven Indians, and three members of the bus crew. By Friday evening details of 17 persons were established.

Likewise, 30 passengers were said to be travelling on the Ganapati Deluxe Bus, but identities of only 17 of them were established by the evening, according to Deputy Superintendent of Police Bhesh Raj Rijal. Three of the passengers on the Gaur-bound bus survived.

Earlier in the morning, officials had estimated that at least 60 people were on board the two buses and this figure was revised later.

Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and Nepal Army personnel who were deployed to rescue the passengers worked tirelessly all day to locate the buses and survivors, but their efforts were hampered by the swelling river and continuous rainfall.

Jugeshwar Raya Yadav from ward 9 of Garuda Municipality, Nandan Das from ward 1 of Gonahi Municipality, and Saroj Gupta, all from Rautahat district, managed to survive. Gupta was discharged after minor treatment at a government hospital in Bharatpur. Yadav and Das are undergoing treatment at Chitwan Medical College in Bharatpur.

Jugeshwar was returning from Kathmandu after the treatment of his son and daughter. “I was in the bus along with my 10-year-old son, my daughter and two grandchildren,” Jugeshwar said. “Now I am here at the hospital, but all of them were trapped inside the bus.”

According to him, the driver had stopped the bus at Simaltal for a while due to a landslide. “Later, the bus crew decided to push ahead thinking that the landslide had stopped,” he said. But the bus was swept into the river by a moving mass of mud. “I somehow got out of the bus, swam to the riverbank and climbed to the road. All others went down along with the bus,” he said.

Nandan had gone to Kathmandu to initiate a process to go to Bahrain in search of work. He was returning home after submitting his passport to his agent in the Capital. “It was about an hour after we had eaten at a hotel. The bus overturned from the road. The strong water current threw me out of the bus window. I swam across the river,” he said.

Rescue teams from the Nepal Army and Armed Police Force along with some divers, started a search operation at 8am. Twelve divers have been mobilised from the Disaster Management Training Institute of the APF at Kurintar. “A team of 70 trained in water-induced disasters have been deployed at the incident site. Of them 12 are divers,” Superintendent of Police Janak Puri of the institute said.

The Nepal Army rescue team has 55 members. “Of them 20, including five divers, were assigned to search with boats,” Lieutenant Colonel Dinesh Lama said. A team of Nepal Police is also mobilised at the incident site. While the army and APF personnel are scouring the river, the Nepal Police team is busy with other arrangements outside the river.

The teams halted their search operation after 7 pm, and plan to resume on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, rescuers have found some items including a child’s trousers and a curtain of a bus window. Based on these items, they believe they have pinpointed the location of the Angel Deluxe Bus.

In a separate incident at Satrakilo along the same road section, the driver was killed after a falling boulder hit a bus. The victim, identified as Meghnath BK, died in the course of treatment at Chitwan Medical College. The bus was heading for Kathmandu from Butwal, according to Bhesh Raj Rijal, deputy superintendent of police.

Likewise, landslides triggered by incessant rainfall buried 11 people to death in Kaski district.

Of the victims, six members of a family and their neighbour died after being buried by the landslide in ward 19 of Pokhara Metropolitan City at around 10:15 pm on Thursday.

The deceased have been identified as Kul Bahadur Pariyar, 47; his 43-year-old wife, Mana Kumari; his mother Laxima, 85; two daughters—Prabha, 20, and Prashna, 15; and son-in-law Asmit Pariyar.

Their neighbour Radhika Pariyar also died while trying to rescue the victims, Deputy Superintendent of Police Basant Kumar Sharma said, quoting eyewitnesses.

Three other children—aged 18, 11 and 9 years—were killed in Chainpur in ward 32 of Pokhara Metropolitan City.

Likewise, the body of 80-year-old Maiti Kumari Gurung, who had gone missing in the disaster, was also found at Tallo Saple in ward 11 of Madi Rural Municipality in Kaski.

All the bodies have been sent to the Pokhara Academy of Health Sciences for postmortem.

“At least 15 people have died in Kaski, Myagdi, Chitwan, and Saptari districts in the past 24 hours,” said Dijan Bhattarai, information officer at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) under the Ministry of Home Affairs. “The actual number of passengers who died in the two passenger buses is still being ascertained.”

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal expressed sadness over the incident and directed the authorities to conduct search and rescue operations.

“I am deeply saddened by the news of nearly five dozen passengers missing after a landslide swept away buses in Simaltar of Narayanghat-Mugling road section and the loss caused by the disaster in different parts of the country,” Dahal wrote on X. “I direct all government agencies, including the home administration, to search and rescue the passengers.”

Several other districts also witnessed landslides, flooding, and inundation due to the rainfall that continued since Friday last week.

Debris from landslides at various locations obstructed vehicular movements, and flooding cut the road sections, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded.

A Nepal Police bulletin issued on Friday afternoon said that a total of 103 people have died and 3,547 families displaced in rain-related incidents across the country since June 10.

Meanwhile, the Meteorological Forecasting Division under the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology had also warned of extremely heavy rainfall in some places of the Koshi, Madhesh, Bagmati, Gandaki, and Lumbini provinces on Friday night.

Met officials said that these five provinces along with Karnali Province would witness light to moderate rainfall, with a few places witnessing heavy rainfall on Saturday.

“Incidents of extremely heavy rainfalls will go down Monday onwards, but rainfall will continue, as the monsoon trough is still close to the country,” said Gobinda Jha, a meteorologist at the division.

The division said that Chitwan witnessed 133 mm of rainfall, where the two buses were swept into Trishuli River by the landslide. Bhairahawa witnessed 157.9 mm of rainfall, Pokhara 102.3 mm of rainfall and Udayapur 104 mm of rainfall.

The monsoon season in Nepal generally begins on June 13 and ends on September 23. This year, the monsoon entered Nepal from the southwest on June 10, three days ahead of the usual onset date. Last year, it started on June 14, a day later than the normal onset day.

The monsoon, which delivers around 80 percent of the country’s total annual rainfall, generally lasts for 105 days. But, in recent years, it has been taking more time to withdraw.

The division has forecast above-normal rains and above-average maximum and minimum temperatures this monsoon, which could unleash extreme weather events such as flooding, inundation, and landslides.

Nepal is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the climate crisis and has witnessed multiple extreme weather events over the past decade and a half.

Evidence suggests that maximum temperatures in Nepal are rising faster, at 0.056 degrees Celsius a year, compared to the global average rise of 0.03 degrees Celsius a year.

Experts say extreme weather events—excessive rainfall in a short period, continuous rains for several days after the monsoon, dry spells, droughts, below-average precipitation, and above-normal winter temperatures—have become more frequent in Nepal.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority estimates that 1.81 million people and 412,000 households will be affected by monsoon this year. Of them, 83,000 households will be directly impacted, and 18,000 families will require rescue due to monsoon-related disasters.