Nepal has begun temporarily burying hundreds of victims recovered from devastating floods, with authorities taking DNA samples and recording the graves to allow families to identify and retrieve the remains later.
Foreign Secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai said the temporary burials were necessary because many bodies had started decomposing, creating public health concerns.
He said medical teams collected DNA samples from the victims before burial to enable families to match and identify their relatives and exhume the remains for traditional funeral rites.
Nepal’s disaster ministry said 752 bodies had been recovered, while 2,502 people remained missing, including 589 foreigners.
The government has appealed for international assistance, saying it needs more than 1,000 freezer units to preserve the large number of recovered bodies.
Authorities are also requesting DNA testing kits as emergency teams struggle to safely store and identify the victims.
In Hindu-majority Nepal, the dead are traditionally cremated on funeral pyres.
The temporary burials are therefore intended as a form of storage until the remains can be identified and returned to families for cremation.
