KATHMANDU, Aug. 28 -- Ninety is a number the State Department arrived at by counting people nobody had heard from. It is not a casualty figure, and the department was careful to say so.

Tommy Pigott, the principal deputy spokesperson, said on Thursday that 90 Americans were currently unaccounted for after the flooding in Nepal, adding that the numbers are very dynamic. Three Americans have been rescued. Washington is aware of no American deaths, and is working with Nepalese authorities to locate the rest.

Set that against Nepal's own accounting and a gap opens immediately. Nepali police and tourism officials put 910 people missing in the country, of whom at least 517 are foreigners, and the nationality breakdown circulated from the Nepa...