Chitwan District officials, in southern central Terai in Nepal, have recovered 233 bodies.

However, they say, of those recovered, they have identified only four.

The authority said the following:

The remainder of the bodies are being kept in health institutions and holding centres, they added.

DNA samples are still in the process of being collected and noted

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) have said 626 have died in the flood while 2,426 remain missing.

Nepalese previously said the number of people who died in the natural disaster stood at 616.

It is also an increase on the number of people reported missing yesterday, which stood at 1,924.

By Vivek Chaudhary

On the road to Kathmandu, where chaos stretches as far as the human eye can see, they are hoping for the best but, increasingly, expecting the worst.

As traffic sits nose to tail, vast crowds of bedraggled pedestrians are desperately heading north in search of loved ones whose mobile phones have gone unanswered since a vast flash flood swept down from the Himalayas on Wednesday morning.

With buildings, bridges and entire neighbourhoods seemingly wiped off the map, and the official death toll rising by the hour, they are grimly aware that in the grisly aftermath of this terrible natural disaster no news is very bad news indeed.

In the teeming rain, I came across Prem Bahdur Tamang walking forlornly and clutching a mobile phone with a picture of his nephew Sangyam Rumba on its cracked screen.

Trudging from one person to the next, he desperately showed the image of his young relative, who is seen smiling at the camera with his arms crossed, asking if anyone had seen him, while fearing deep down what the answer might be.

‘We haven’t seen him since the water came,’ Prem told me, referring to the destructive wave of mud and debris which seemed to destroy everything in its wake. ‘His parents have been crying and haven’t eaten for almost three days because they know that the outcome is not going to be good.’