KATHMANDU - Nepal has shut schools for three days after landslides and floods triggered by two days of heavy rain across the Himalayan nation killed 129 people, with 62 missing, officials said on Sunday.

The floods brought traffic and normal activity to a standstill in the Kathmandu valley, where 37 deaths were recorded in a region home to 4 million people and the capital.

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Nepal's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology urged all the local governments to close the schools for three days starting from Sunday and decided to postpone all the examinations at the university level which were scheduled until Tuesday.

Authorities said students and their parents faced difficulties as university and school buildings damaged by the rains needed repair.

Some parts of the capital reported rain of up to 322.2 mm (12.7 inches), pushing the level of its main Bagmati river up 2.2 m (7 ft) past the danger mark, experts said.

On Saturday evening, 14 bodies were recovered from two vehicles buried in landslides in Jyaple Khola of Dhading district along the Tribhuvan Highway that connects Kathmandu, said Prahlad Silwal, deputy spokesperson for district police.

One more passenger bus buried in landslides was being retrieved, Silwal told Xinhua.

But there were some signs of respite on Sunday morning, with the rains easing in many places, said Govinda Jha, a weather forecaster in the capital.

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"There may be some isolated showers, but heavy rains are unlikely," he said.

Weather officials in the capital blamed the rainstorms on a low-pressure system in the Bay of Bengal extending over parts of neighboring India close to Nepal.

Haphazard development amplifies climate change risks in Nepal, say climate scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

"I’ve never before seen flooding on this scale in Kathmandu," said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, an environmental risk official at the center.

The level in the Koshi river in Nepal's southeast has started to fall, however, said Ram Chandra Tiwari, the region's top bureaucrat.

The river, which brings deadly floods to India's eastern state of Bihar nearly every year, had been running above the danger mark at a level nearly three times normal, he said.