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Six climbers missing after avalanche in Nepal
One Briton, two Swedes and three Nepalis are missing after an avalanche hit a climbers' camp in eastern Nepal.
One Briton, two Swedes and three Nepalis are missing after an avalanche hit a climbers' camp in eastern Nepal, tourism officials have said.
"A private helicopter searched the area where the men went missing twice on Wednesday, but did not find the men," Lok Bahadur Khatri, an official at the ministry of tourism said on Wednesday.
An avalanche hit the camp at 6,400 metres on Nepal's Mount Ama Dablam at around midnight on Monday, Krishna Prasad Bhandari, a tourism official said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
The men in the camp were asleep when the avalanche struck, Bhandari said.
"Rescue and search work for the missing is going on," the official said in a statement.
The missing foreigners were identified as British citizen Duncan Williams, 32, and Swedes Daniel Carlsson, 27, and Mikael Forsberg, 41.
"The people have been swept away by the avalanche but we can't yet confirm any deaths," said Khatri.
Three Nepali high-altitude guides were also missing, Khatri said.
Earlier this week, the French embassy said that four French nationals had gone missing while trying to scale a peak in central Nepal.
Nepal hosts thousands of trekkers and mountaineers annually. The country has eight of the world's 14 peaks over 8,000 metres, including the world's highest, Mount Everest, at 8,848 metres.
