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At least 15 people died and hundreds on a religious pilgrimage were missing after an overcrowded bridge collapsed in western Nepal on Tuesday, police and officials said.
Nearly 400 people were said to have been on the bridge across a gorge over the Bheri River, 380 kilometres (240 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, when it collapsed, district officials and police said.
"So far 14 bodies have been recovered on the river banks and one succumbed to injuries while being rushed to hospital," police officer Mithe Thapa Chettri told AFP by phone.
"We expect the death toll to rise," Chettri said.
Local police said 35 injured, most of them women and children, had been airlifted by helicopter to the district headquarters at Birendranagar as rescue teams raced to the remote area as night fell.
"Hundreds of people went missing and we fear dozens might have drowned," local officer Ghanashyam Chaudhary told AFP by telephone, adding that many may have been swept downstream into remote areas of the mainly agricultural countryside that surrounds the Bheri, one of Nepal's largest rivers.
But as many as 100 people reportedly managed to swim to safety with the Bheri River at low winter season flow, Chaudhary said, but rescue teams including the army were battling cold and rugged terrain around the river.
