Pakistan, Aug. 29 -- Three days after Wednesday's disaster, families are still arriving at an army base in Nepal, with photographs and names, hoping someone can tell them whether the people they love are alive. 547 people have already been confirmed dead, five more in Tibet and almost 1,000 still missing. More than half of those unaccounted for are foreigners, many of them pilgrims travelling towards Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar

Roads have disappeared, bridges have been torn away and settlements buried underneath. Satellite analysis indicates that the lower section of a glacier high above the Lhende Khola collapsed, sending an avalanche down more than a kilometre before it turned into a debris flow powerful enough to reshape river c...