Rescuers find two more bodies after French Alps avalanche, raising death toll to 6

PARIS - Emergency workers found two more victims of an avalanche near Mont Blanc in south-eastern France on Monday, raising the death toll from the tragedy to six.

A massive body of snow swept down the Armancette glacier in the Alps on Sunday, killing two mountain guides and four of their clients.

Searchers recovered the bodies of the guides and a couple in their 20s on Sunday, and the remaining victims were found on Monday morning, said prosecutor Karline Bouisset.

They were a 39-year-old woman and a man in his early 40s who was “probably” her partner, she said.

One person had also suffered slight injuries in the avalanche while eight others also swept up were unharmed, the prefecture said.

The avalanche occurred without warning on a sunny day, covering an area of 1,600m by 500m.

Skiing conditions had been “good” on Easter Sunday, said Mr Francois Barbier, the mayor of the town of Contamines-Montjoie, the region where the glacier is located.

“I think it’s the most deadly avalanche this season.”

Weather authority Meteo France had not issued any avalanche alert for the region, but a combination of warmth and wind may have been behind the disaster, local authorities said.

“It’s a particularly alarming tragedy in such good conditions,” said Mr Dorian Labaeye, president of France’s mountain guide union.

“We have tens of thousands of people doing ski touring at the moment in the Alps, there are usually lots of people on the Easter weekend and conditions are usually pretty stable at this time of year,” he told the France Info radio channel.

President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter said he was thinking of the families.

Two brothers died in an avalanche on the same glacier in 2014, both experienced climbers in their 20s. AFP