‘They’ll be finding bodies next year’: a renowned forensic scientist on Nepal’s ‘extreme challenges’

Difficult terrain and inadequate resources will hamper efforts to find flood victims in Nepal and Tibet, the Australian forensic scientist Prof Richard Bassed says. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

The bodies of some of those killed in the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster may never be found, and some of those that are may never be identified, a world-renowned forensic scientist says.

Prof Richard Bassed, the head of forensic medicine at Melbourne’s Monash University, spent three months in Thailand after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and also helped to identify victims of Victoria’s catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.