Nepalese restaurant fundraises for floods victims

A Nepalese restaurant owner from is raising money to help people back affected by devastating floods in the country.

More than 1,000 people are known to have died, and more than 5,000 are still missing, after a flash flood believed to have been triggered by a glacial collapse, swept through border villages two weeks ago.

Robin Sharma owns two venues in Shrewsbury, the Avatar in Mardol, and Yak & Yeti in Frankwell, and decided to host charity dinner nights every Monday in September.

Sharma said he "hopes to collect a good amount of money" as he thought it was the right thing to do. He added a member of his staff had family who had lost their property in the affected area of Nepal.

"A lot of my staff and myself have relatives [in Nepal.] We are not from that that part of the Nepal but we are in different parts," he added.

"One of my staff's relatives [were in the floods] and they lost the properties, not the human life.

"Nepal is a small country. I have not spoken with the friends who are there but that is how I have connected."

Sharma said when the news first broke, he struggled to watch videos of it.

"[When I saw] the mud flood, I was crying," he added.

"I was a little bit watching the clips on YouTube and the social media and then I talked with my friends and family in Nepal.

"I found out and now I can see and I am okay after that but you can not imagine that kind of things happen to the human lives."

Rescue efforts are still continuing, nearly two weeks after the flood.

Army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet told Agence France-Presse they were working "with the same tempo we had on day one".

"Our focus is on search and rescue at three levels - on ground, by air, and in the tunnels," he said.

"We are making sure that no one is still stranded."

Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.