SMART team to head home from Nepal, says foreign minister

Malaysia’s disaster assistance and rescue team (SMART) is expected to return home today or tomorrow from Nepal after taking part in the search for 55 Malaysians still missing following the floods and landslides in the country.

Foreign minister Mohamad Hasan stressed that Nepali authorities had no plans to end the search and rescue operations as about 5,000 people remained unaccounted for.

“The team will return to Malaysia. But they will hand over all the drones brought from here to the Nepali rescue teams for their use,” he told reporters during a visit to the media centre at the 2026 Umno general assembly here today.

The 11 SMART personnel left for Nepal last Saturday, with 12.4 tonnes of search and rescue equipment, on a mission that was originally expected to last 10 days.

The Aug 26 floods and landslides along the Nepal-Tibet border have killed more than 1,400 people, with thousands more missing, according to Nepali and Chinese authorities.

Mohamad said there had been no new developments or trace of the missing Malaysians.

He said the last known locations of their mobile phones were in areas that were badly affected by the disaster.

Mohamad said the Malaysian embassy in Kathmandu was in discussions with Nepal’s foreign and law ministries to establish the status of the missing Malaysians.

He said this is because Nepali law stipulated that a death certificate for a missing person could only be issued after three years, compared with seven years in Malaysia.

“If possible, we want to establish a legal mechanism so that matters such as insurance and other claims can be dealt with immediately,” he said.

Mohamad said Malaysia was also seeking Nepal’s cooperation to allow DNA samples from bodies recovered to be sent to Kuala Lumpur for matching against samples from the families of the missing Malaysians.

He said Nepal faced a shortage of facilities and equipment to conduct DNA matching.