IsraAID sends emergency team to Nepal after deadly glacier flood

IsraAID, Israel's largest non-governmental humanitarian agency, announced on 27 August 2026 that it was sending an emergency team to Nepal, the day after a glacier collapse in the Himalayas set off catastrophic flash floods and landslides. The disaster began on 26 August near Nepal's border with China. Water and debris poured down the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli river basin and wiped out villages in its path. Within about a week, Nepali authorities put the death toll at more than 1,250, with thousands more missing and many thousands of people forced into temporary shelters.

The IsraAID team reached affected areas within 48 hours. It handed out family hygiene kits with soap, toothbrushes, toilet paper, menstrual products and other basics to families who had escaped with nothing. It also set up child protection and mental-health support for displaced children and for rescue workers, a kind of help the group has made a specialty in disaster zones. UNICEF estimated that at least 22,000 children urgently needed safe water, sanitation and hygiene support.

The seven-person team, made up of local and international staff, is led by Mai Leshem. Some members had worked for IsraAID in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake, when the group began a programme in the country that ran for several years. Leshem told JNS that search and rescue was still the government's top priority and that many of the worst-hit areas could not yet be reached, but that the team was doing what it could.

The American Jewish Committee gave IsraAID a $15,000 grant for the response from its humanitarian relief fund, continuing a partnership that also supported IsraAID's work in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake and the 2017 floods.