Rescuers in Nepal have pulled a man and a woman alive from the wreckage ten days after devastating floods struck the Nepal-Tibet border, even as roughly 500 people remain trapped inside blocked hydropower tunnels. The disaster, triggered by a glacier collapse that unleashed a torrent of ice, rock, mud and debris, has killed at least 1,300 people and left around 5,000 still missing, making the ongoing rescue effort a race against time for those still buried.

A Chinese national was freed from a 225-metre tunnel at the Trishuli hydropower project by a joint team of Nepalese soldiers and South Korean disaster experts, becoming the third person rescued alive from the site after two Nepalese workers were pulled out the previous day. Separately, a woman covered in mud was rescued from a house in the flood-hit town of Nuwakot and airlifted to Kathmandu. Officials say hundreds of workers remain trapped across roughly half a dozen tunnels blocked by debris, with rescuers using heavy machinery and air pipes to reach them, though a former hydropower official warned that survival chances beyond several weeks depend heavily on tunnel conditions, food and oxygen supplies.