'A woman died in front of my eyes', says BBC journalist in Nepal

Search and rescue operations continue in Nepal after flash floods and massive landslides hit the Nepal-Tibet border, killing more than 400 people.

Overwhelmed hospitals are struggling to cope with the sudden influx of patients, with at least 900 injured survivors having been rescued from the worst-hit areas. Many other survivors are looking for their loved ones, as hundreds of people remain missing.

BBC Nepali's Shreejana Shrestha travelled to Nuwakot, one of the main affected districts in central Nepal, to visit an army camp that had been turned into a search and rescue centre. This is what she saw.

I entered the camp to an absolutely heartbreaking scene.

Hundreds of people were queuing outside, desperately trying to see if they could find their loved ones. Inside, a woman cradling an infant in her arms was crying hysterically. Her entire family, including her father, husband and mother, were all missing. She was traumatised, and in so much pain.

There were other people who had sustained injuries, and some who said they had miraculously survived.

One driver who was working in Rasua told us he'd been thrown into the water when the floods hit. He still doesn't know how he managed to survive. Yet while thankful to be alive, he was also devastated - he had lost more than 20 of his friends. When I tried speaking to him I could see he was unable to focus, and not in a proper state of mind. There were tears in his eyes.

At one point while I was filming, a woman - perhaps in her 60s or 70s - was taken out of a helicopter and brought to the centre to be treated. She suddenly collapsed as I was recording, and I later learned that she had died. It is difficult to describe what I saw.

Every hour at the camp there were dozens of helicopters coming and going, and many people being treated. Whenever these helicopters came, people would just look at them with a ray of hope that their loved ones would be inside. And even as the helicopters landed, blowing gusts of wind and mud down on everyone, people still didn't look away - just to see if they could catch a glimpse of who might be on board.

After we left the camp we tried to get access to the Internet so we could share what we had, but internet connectivity was extremely poor, so we drove about three hours back to our office in Kathmandu.

Disasters are something I have covered several times in Nepal, but this is one of the most heartbreaking I have ever seen. There was a woman who was dying just behind me, and I didn't know how to process that. It was so painful to witness. But as a journalist you do your job: you continue getting, and giving, as much information as possible.