A British husband, Pramod Poudel, has travelled from Uckfield, East Sussex, to Nepal to search for his newlywed wife Sumitra, 25, after she went missing when a collapsed glacier sent a devastating flood down mountains and through villages along the Nepal-Tibet border. Her final words to him, hours before the disaster struck, were "I love you so much"; he has heard nothing from her, his mother, brother or uncle since, after their entire village was destroyed. The case highlights the growing anguish among British families as the number of UK nationals unaccounted for in the disaster has risen to 48.

The confirmed death toll from the flood has reached 734, with a further 2,498 people still missing across the country. Among the 48 missing Britons are two teenagers, aged 13 and 14, and Pravin Atmakur, a 54-year-old NHS consultant psychiatrist who was leading 77 pilgrims to Mount Kailash in Tibet when disaster struck; his wife has since flown to Kathmandu to search for him. A group of 31 tourists, none of them British, were found alive in the Rasuwa district, offering some hope amid the widespread devastation, which also destroyed roads, bridges, homes, power lines and mobile phone masts.