The Indian Embassy in China on Monday urged families of Indians missing since the August 26 flash flood in the Tibet-Nepal border region to provide DNA samples to help identify them.
The Indian mission made the request after Chinese authorities confirmed that they were now able to receive DNA samples from families of Indian nationals listed as missing in the disaster, an Embassy press release said.
On Sunday, Chinese officials updated the death toll to 43, with 519 others remaining missing. The missing include 261 foreigners, of whom 49 are from India.
“The Embassy will be notified, and will in turn inform the family, should a match be confirmed”, it said. “Blood samples can be collected from the parents of the missing foreign national or the spouse and children (samples from multiple children should be collected wherever possible),” the Indian mission said. “If the missing person has no living parents or children, kindly collect blood samples from siblings (collecting samples from all siblings is preferred),” it said. The embassy said that the samples should be well labelled with the nationality, name and passport number of the missing person, name and passport number of the family member and sample ID number.
