Kathmandu, Aug. 27 -- The moment an ambulance siren sounds, a crowd surges across the hospital premises.

Before the doors have even opened, anxious eyes are fixed on the stretcher inside. Hope and dread sit side by side on exhausted faces. Families rush forward, wondering whether the person being brought in might be the one they have been searching for.

Then the doors open.

A patient is carried out. The face is not familiar.

The crowd slowly breaks apart, only to gather again when the next ambulance arrives.

That was the scene on Thursday at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj, where the usual bustle of patients and visitors had given way to something darker. Relatives of people who disappeared after Wednesday's dev...