CHAMONIX, France: Rescuers have given up hope of finding more survivors of a Nepal avalanche which left at least nine people dead, a French mountain guide organization which has been in close contact with them said yesterday.
“The searches have been abandoned for today and could be definitively ... because it is thought there is no hope of finding any of the missing alive,” said Christian Trommsdorff, the vice-president of the National Union of Mountain Guides (SNGM).
“The avalanche happened in an area of crevasses and it may be impossible to recover the bodies,” he added.
Rescuers have been unable to find two Frenchmen and a Canadian who were part of a group hit by a wall of snow in their tents near the peak of the 8,156-meter Manaslu in the early hours of Sunday.
The Canadian has been identified by his sister as a doctor from the French-speaking province of Quebec, Dominique Ouimet.
The missing French nationals are a mountain guide from the Chamonix region and an amateur climber. Eight of the nine confirmed dead have been identified as four French nationals, a Nepali mountain guide, a Spaniard, a German and an Italian.