Troops joined police searching today for hundreds of people missing a day after a bridge collapsed killing 16 and injuring 40 more in a steep river gorge in Nepal, officials said.
Nearly 400 people were on the bridge over the Bheri river, 380 kilometres west of the capital Kathmandu, when disaster struck yesterday afternoon, witnesses said.
Police said 35 people had been officially reported as missing by relatives on today and the number was expected to rise.
"The rescue operations began early Wednesday morning. Around 450 police and soldiers have been deployed to scour the river banks from three locations," district administrator Anil Kumar Pandey said by phone.
The 500-metre bridge, only a year old and made of metal and steel coils, plunged into the gorge after a catastrophic failure of one of the supporting pillars that rose 50 metres above the water level, officials said.
Despite the search efforts, including two helicopters that were scouring the river, hopes of finding people still alive appeared remote.
"The chances of finding survivors look slim," Pandey said.
Deputy superintendent of police Bahadur Jung Malla, who was involved in the rescue operations, told AFP that police and army teams were combing the river banks up to 40 kilometres downstream.
Agencies