Photos show one family in Nepal bid farewell, as other flood victims are buried in unmarked graves

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Relatives console Muna Khadka, center, who lost her son Aayush Khada in flash floods, at a cremation ground in Chitwan, Nepal, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) CORRECTION: Corrects to clarify that this was at a separate cremation ground and not during a mass burial.

Nepalese army soldiers look for bodies of flash flood victims amid a rescue operation from a river in Chitwan, Nepal, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) — Relatives console Muna Khadka, center, who lost her son Aayush Khada in flash floods, at a cremation ground in Chitwan, Nepal, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) CORRECTION: Corrects to clarify that this was at a separate cremation ground and not during a mass burial.

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2:47 AM on Tuesday, September 1

By DAR YASIN

CHITWAN, Nepal (AP) — She knows her 21-year-old son is dead, but she didn't get a chance to see him before his body was committed to its cremation shroud.

Knowing his fate after the catastrophic floods that killed over 1,000 people in Nepal and China brings some comfort, but all she could do was touch his shroud for a second to say goodbye before his cremation on Monday.

At a mass burial ground in Nepal's Chitwan district, the Hindu rituals of death — cremation, prayer, the final farewell — are being lost to the scale of the disaster as overwhelmed authorities are burying unidentified bodies because there are too many to keep or identify individually.

Twelve more bodies have been fished out of the Narayani River in Chitwan, downriver from the areas hit by floods, in the past day, and the deaths continue to mount.

Another body arrives. Another gurney. Another journey across the sodden earth. Officials carry the gurneys, the stark white of their protective suits jarring against Chitwan’s lush green, still alive as the dead keep arriving.

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