Nepal has begun preparations to bury unidentified and unclaimed bodies recovered from the devastating flash floods that swept through parts of the country this week, as authorities grapple with the risk of disease and the rapid deterioration of the remains.
At least 734 bodies have been recovered so far after torrents of water and mud struck villages and towns on Wednesday. Chitwan district, in southern Nepal and bordering India, has reported the highest number of recoveries, with 233 bodies.
Authorities in Chitwan decided on Saturday to bury the bodies after hospitals and temporary facilities ran out of space to store them. Health officials warned that the decomposition of bodies and the foul smell from makeshift storage facilities could pose a public health risk.
"As the number of dead bodies piled up, we used a house as a cooling centre where the bodies were kept," an official said.
"As the house also ran out of space, we had no alternative but to bury them," the official added.
Authorities, however, are taking steps to ensure that relatives can identify and recover the bodies at a later stage.
DNA samples are being collected from each body before burial, while officials are maintaining detailed records and assigning every body a unique identification or reference number. The bodies are also being tagged with their locations to facilitate their recovery if a DNA match is established later.
By Saturday afternoon, DNA profiling of more than 100 bodies had been completed and the remains were ready for burial, officials said.
The burial pits are being dug about 1.5 metres deep, with a gap of around 40 centimetres between individual bodies. The arrangement is intended to ensure that a specific body can be exhumed without disturbing others if it is later identified through DNA matching.
Each body is being placed in a bag marked with its identification number. Concrete platforms and signboards displaying the corresponding numbers are also being installed at the burial sites.
Authorities plan to document the burials through photographs and video and geo-tag the burial locations to create a permanent record of where each body has been buried.
Relatives searching for missing persons will be able to provide DNA samples at designated hospitals across Nepal. Once the samples are processed, the health authorities will compare them with DNA profiles collected from the unidentified bodies.
If a match is found, officials will use the corresponding identification number to trace the records and determine the exact burial location. Police will then facilitate the exhumation of the body and hand it over to the family.
Nepal Police have also uploaded details of unidentified and unclaimed bodies on a dedicated website to help families search for missing relatives.
Officials said around 2,500 people, including hundreds of foreign nationals, remain unaccounted for in Nepal following the floods.