NEW DELHI — At least four mountaineers
were killed on Tuesday in an avalanche in the Indian Himalayas, with around 25
others stuck in a crevasse, officials said.
اضافة اعلان
Media reports put the toll at 10 following the incident at around 4,800m
in the northern state of Uttarakhand involving a group of around 40 people.
“We have confirmation of four deaths out of the 33 people trapped. Around
eight of them have already been rescued and the rest are trapped in a
crevasse,” Ridhim Aggarwal from the State Disaster Response Force told AFP.
The group included 34 trainees from a local mountaineering institute and
seven instructors, the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering said in a statement.
The avalanche struck at around 8:45am (3:15am GMT) on the 5,670m Mount
Draupadi ka Danda-II.
Vishal Ranjan, registrar with the mountaineering institute confirmed the
four deaths and said the rescue operation “has been stopped for now because of
heavy rainfall and snowfall in the region”.
“We sent two air force choppers to the region and the third one is here on
standby for now because of bad weather there,” Devendra Singh Patwal, a senior
disaster management official, told AFP.
“There has been no contact with the choppers for now because of the
weather conditions and connectivity in the region,” Patwal said.
“Deeply anguished by the loss of precious lives due to landslide which has
struck the mountaineering expedition carried out by the Nehru Mountaineering
Institute in Uttarkashi,” Defense Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted, without
giving further details.
Although no substantial research has been done on the impacts of climate
change on mountaineering risks in the Himalayas, climbers have reported
crevasses widening, running water on previously snowy slopes, and the
increasing formation of glacial lakes.
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