Katmandu: Elephants helped rescue hundreds of tourists from a flooded jungle safari park in Nepal, officials said on Monday, as the death toll from flash floods and landslides after four days of heavy rain rose to 70.
The Rapti River overflowed its banks in Sauraha, 80 km (50 miles) south of the capital, Katmandu, inundating hotels and restaurants and leaving some 600 tourists stranded.
Sauraha, on the fringe of Chitwan National Park, is home to 605 rhinoceroses and is popular with foreign tourists, including Indian and Chinese visitors, mainly for rhino watching and elephant rides.
“Some 300 guests were rescued on elephant backs and tractor trailers to (nearby) Bharatpur yesterday and the rest will be taken to safer places today,” Suman Ghimire, head of a group of Sauraha hotel owners, said by telephone on Monday.
Floods have also swept the nearby northeast Indian state of Assam state in the past two days, killing at least 15 people and displacing nearly 2.3 million, officials said on Monday.
Nearly 90 percent of Assam’s Kaziranga national park, home to the world’s largest population of the endangered one-horned rhinoceros, was under water, Forest Minister Pramilla Rani Brahma said. The animals have moved to higher ground.
In Nepal, relief workers said 26 of the country’s 75 districts were either submerged or had been hit by landslides after heavy rains lashed the Himalayan nation, home to Mount Everest and the birthplace of Lord Buddha.
The death toll was expected to rise with another 50 people reported missing, Information and Communications Minister Mohan Bahadur Basnet said.
Basnet said more than 60,000 homes were under water, mainly in the southern plains bordering India. Estimates of losses were not available, with rescuers yet to reach villages marooned by the worst floods in recent years.
“The situation is worrying as tens of thousands of people have been hit,” Basnet told Reuters.
Large swaths of farmland in the southern plains, Nepal’s breadbasket, are under water and the country could face food shortages due to crop losses, aid workers said.
“The heavy rains hit at one of the worst times, shortly after farmers planted their rice crop in the country’s most important agricultural region,” said Sumnima Shrestha, a spokeswoman for US-based non-profit group Heifer International.
Monsoon rains, which start in June and continue through September, are important for farm-dependent Nepal, but they also cause heavy loss of life and property damage each year.
Elephants help rescue hundreds from flooded Nepali safari park
Elephants help rescue hundreds from flooded Nepali safari park
Fans bid farewell to Japan’s only pandas
TOKYO: Panda lovers in Tokyo said goodbye on Sunday to a hugely popular pair of the bears that are set to return to China, leaving Japan without the beloved animals for the first time in half a century.
Loaned out as part of China’s “panda diplomacy” program, the distinctive black-and-white animals have symbolized friendship between Beijing and Tokyo since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1972.
Some visitors at Ueno Zoological Gardens were left teary-eyed as they watched Japan’s only two pandas Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao munch on bamboo.
The animals are expected to leave for China on Tuesday following a souring of relations between Asia’s two largest economies.
“I feel like seeing pandas can help create a connection with China too, so in that sense I really would like pandas to come back to Japan again,” said Gen Takahashi, 39, a Tokyo resident who visited the zoo with his wife and their two-year-old daughter.
“Kids love pandas as well, so if we could see them with our own eyes in Japan, I’d definitely want to go.”
The pandas’ abrupt return was announced last month after Japan’s conservative premier Sanae Takaichi hinted Tokyo could intervene militarily in the event of any attack on Taiwan.
Her comment provoked the ire of Beijing, which regards the island as its own territory.
The 4,400 lucky winners of an online lottery took turns viewing the four-year-old twins at Ueno zoo while others gathered nearby, many sporting panda-themed shirts, bags and dolls to celebrate the moment.
Mayuko Sumida traveled several hours from the central Aichi region in the hope of seeing them despite not winning the lottery.
“Even though it’s so big, its movements are really funny-sometimes it even acts kind of like a person,” she said, adding that she was “totally hooked.”
“Japan’s going to be left with zero pandas. It feels kind of sad,” she said.
Their departure might not be politically motivated, but if pandas return to Japan in the future it would symbolize warming relations, said Masaki Ienaga, a professor at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and expert in East Asian international relations.
“In the future...if there are intentions of improving bilateral ties on both sides, it’s possible that (the return of) pandas will be on the table,” he told AFP.
