Zoyal Ghale, who ran into a forest and climbed trees to escape Nepal's deadly floods, was reunited with his mother on Friday after she had begun to fear he and his brother had both perished in their school.

A day earlier, 8-year-old Ghale had been airlifted alone from the devastated northern district of Rasuwa with a broken leg and cuts on his face, while his mother, Matti Maya Tamang, 28, moved from one shelter and collection point to another looking for her two missing children.

"At the fourth place too, my children's names were not on the list, and they were not there," Tamang told Reuters. "I had come to accept that both my children were no more. All I could do was weep. I couldn’t hold myself together at all."