Six people have died and eight others were injured after a terrifying avalanche on the Marmolada mountain in Italy.
A large chunk of glacier broke loose on Sunday afternoon, before sending ice, snow and rock down a popular walking trail.
Walter Milan, a spokesperson for the national Alpine rescue corps, said the number of hikers on the route when the avalanche hit was still being investigated.
Rescuers have been checking licence plates in the nearest car park to determine how many people might be unaccounted for.
Rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state TV: ‘We saw dead [people] and enormous chunks of ice, rock.’
An employee at a local inn, who witnessed the avalanche, told Skytg24: ‘[I] heard a loud noise, typical of a landslide, then we saw a kind of avalanche composed of snow and ice and there I realized that something serious had happened.’
Of the eight hospitalised survivors, two were in ‘grave condition’, emergency services said.
The National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted that the search of the involved area of Marmolada peak involved at least five helicopters and rescue dogs.
‘There are five dead among the people hit by the detachment of the serac,’ the emergency service’s initial tweet said, referring to a technical term for a pinnacle of a glacier.
‘There are eight injured, two of them in grave condition.’
Responders said the avalanche consisted of a ‘pouring down of snow, ice and rock’.
Marmolada, towering about about 11,000 feet, is the highest peak in the eastern Dolomites.
The Alpine rescue service said in a tweet that the segment broke off near an area called Punta Rocca (Rock Point), ‘along the itinerary normally used to reach the peak.’
It was not immediately clear what caused the section of ice to break away and rush down the peak’s slope.
But the intense heat wave gripping Italy since late June could be a factor, Walter Milan, an Alpine rescue service spokesperson told RAI state TV.
‘The heat is unusual,’ Milan said, noting that temperatures in recent days on the peak had topped 10C.
‘That’s extreme heat’ for the peak, Milan said. “Clearly it’s something abnormal.’
The injured were flown to several hospitals in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto, according to rescue services.
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