The death toll from catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border has surged past 1,000, authorities said Tuesday, as rescue teams continued searching through mud, debris and damaged hydropower tunnels nearly a week after the disaster.

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority reported 987 deaths in the country, with Chinese state media confirming 16 fatalities in Tibet, bringing the combined toll to more than 1,000. Around 3,900 people remain missing in Nepal, including 583 foreign nationals, while China has reported 546 missing.

The floods were triggered on August 26 by a glacial collapse near the border that sent a massive surge of water, ice, rock and debris racing down the Trishuli and Bhotekoshi river systems. Entire settlements were wiped out, roads and bridges destroyed, and multiple hydropower projects heavily damaged.

Hundreds of workers are still feared trapped in mud-filled tunnels at hydropower sites. Joint teams of Nepalese, Chinese, Indian and other international rescuers have so far pulled out more than 270 people from those sites, while overall more than 11,800 people have been rescued across the affected districts.

Chitwan district has recorded the highest number of recovered bodies, followed by Nawalparasi. Many victims remain unidentified, and authorities have begun mass burials while collecting DNA samples to help families identify the dead. Fresh flood alerts were also issued in several districts amid ongoing intermittent rain.

“In the past two and a half years or three years of my service, I have asked them to dismiss over 40 staff on account of corruption and financial malpractice.”

The above disclosure was made by the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, when he met with media executives and other journalists in Abuja, yesterday.

“More than five of them are being prosecuted at the moment. You can follow those cases in court; they are public knowledge,”said Olukoyede..

He stressed that the laid off staff is part of the efforts to ensure that personnel of the anti-graft agency maintained the highest standards of integrity while investigating and prosecuting corruption cases.

The EFCC chairman said the commission had also introduced measures to strengthen accountability among its personnel, including a gift policy designed to regulate the acceptance and declaration of gifts by staff.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has invited former Bayelsa State Governor, Timipre Sylva, to make himself available for questioning.

This is in connection with an alleged $14.86 million fraud when he was former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.

The commission’s spokesman, Dele Oyewale, stated this on Monday while reacting to Sylva’s public reappearance, and his allegation that the anti-graft agency had conducted itself more as an organ of the All Progressives Congress than as an institution of the state.

“He has been declared wanted; he should make himself available to the commission,” Oyewale said.