Malaysian Rescue Team Leaves For Nepal Ten Days After Floods That Left 55 Malaysians Unaccounted For
Families of Missing Malaysians Question Effectiveness of Rescue Efforts After Nine-Day Delay
Hani Othman has been searching for her husband there for eight of those days, on her own initiative. Families have asked what a team arriving now can realistically achieve.
An 11-member Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team left Subang on Saturday morning for Nepal, ten days after the flash floods and landslides that have left 55 Malaysians uncontactable.
The team — a commander and 10 personnel — departed at 9am aboard an A400M Atlas alongside 31 air force personnel, carrying 12.4 tonnes of equipment. National Disaster Management Agency director-general Meor Ismail Meor Akim said it included rescue and detection equipment, communications systems, high-capacity drones and specialised gear for tunnel rescue.
SMART commander Abdul Manaf Che Isa said the team would be briefed in Kathmandu by Nepal's emergency management agency and Malaysian representatives before deploying. It is expected to operate for up to 10 days.
The gap
The disaster happened on Aug. 26. The team left on Sept. 5.
Families of the missing have said publicly that they want clarity on what SMART's objectives are and what it can realistically achieve after nine days had already passed. Speaking for them, Manivannan called on Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to raise the matter directly with Nepal's prime minister to expedite the deployment of Malaysian rescue and forensic teams, which he argued could help identify Malaysian victims and give families certainty.
Reporting has referred to Nepal clearing the SMART deployment, which indicates the delay involved host-country authorisation rather than Malaysian readiness alone. ⚠️ The full sequence has not been set out publicly by either government.
The numbers, and a complication in them
As of Sept. 4, the Foreign Ministry said 55 Malaysians remained uncontactable following floods and landslides in Nepal and China. A further 77 who were found safe in Tibet and Nepal have been brought to Kathmandu for processing before returning home.
Separately, 36 Malaysians were reported uncontactable in China after floods and a mudslide disrupted travel and communications on the Tibet side of the border.
Those figures may not be additive. The ministry said it was pursuing verification through diplomatic channels with the Chinese government over potential overlap between reports of Malaysians in Nepal and those in Tibet, with the embassy in Beijing in contact with Chinese authorities and Wisma Putra engaging the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
In Nepal, the death toll has risen to 1,220, with 4,762 people still missing, including 844 foreigners, according to figures reported by Anadolu Agency.
Who is missing
Among the Malaysians unaccounted for is a nine-member expedition known as Team Loe, after its leader Mohd Fakhrul Munir Mohd Isa, a Senior Fire Officer II with the fire department's air special operations unit, in his forties, known to friends as Loe. Also missing from the same group is Mohd Sani Harul, deputy director of operations at the Fire and Rescue Department, along with Azman Karim and Mohd Padzil Daros.
The group was caught in flooding believed to have occurred in a valley in Rasuwa district.
Others were travelling separately. K. Balasingam, 71, was on a religious trip to Mount Kailash when the flooding began; his family says it has had no news despite contacting the embassy in Kathmandu, police and members of his travel group. N. Kalaiselvi, 65, was also on a Kailash pilgrimage. Three climbers in their late twenties — Muhammad Muhaimin Azhad Noor Hadi, Muhammad Adib Haikal Awang Mansor and Muhammad Zaki Othman — went missing separately.
Eight days on the ground
Hani Othman flew to Kathmandu two days after the flooding, on her own initiative, to look for her husband.
In the time since, she has passed information to Nepal Police including reported sightings of two white four-wheel-drive vehicles believed to have been carrying her husband's group before the disaster. She collected donations from Malaysians that filled a lorry, then waited on Nepalese government approval to enter the affected area. She distributed aid around Kathmandu on behalf of Team Loe, and met the wife of the driver who had transported her husband's group — the driver and several other survivors having been rescued from Timure on Friday.
On Saturday she confirmed she was joining a local relief organisation to travel from Nuwakot toward Betrawati, carrying aid to Trishuli.
She and her husband would have marked their tenth wedding anniversary on Thursday.
What the team can do
SMART's stated capabilities are search and rescue, drone operations, logistics, communications and technical support, with tunnel rescue equipment in its load.
Ten days after a flash flood in mountainous terrain, that capability set is as relevant to recovery and identification as to rescue. Neither Nadma nor the fire department has characterised the mission's objectives in those terms publicly, and the distinction is the one families have been asking about.