Mont Blanc in south-eastern France (file image). Photo: Benjamin Polge / Hans Lucas via AFP
By Kathryn Armstrong
At least four people have died in an avalanche in the French Alps, the country's interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, has said.
It happened at the Armancette glacier near Mont Blanc in south-eastern France around midday on Sunday local time.
The local deputy mayor has confirmed that two of the dead were mountain guides.
Several injured people have been taken to hospital, and two people are still missing.
Jean-Luc Mattel, deputy mayor of the nearby Contamines-Montjoie village, said the avalanche was caused by a slab of snow detaching from the top of the mountain.
Search and rescue dogs and mountain-rescue teams worked all day to try to reach those who were caught, who are all thought to have been backcountry skiing.
The search for two missing people was expected to resume on Monday.
Mattel said the risk level on Sunday morning was "reasonable" and the guides, both of them locals, were highly experienced.
"Today, we are mourning, and there is great sadness among all of us mountaineers, friends of Les Contamines, those who died are people we knew, and all our thoughts go out to their families," he said.
Darmanin and French President Emmanuel Macron have also expressed their sympathy.
Before the incident, a nearby ski resort called Les Contamines-Montjoie posted a video on social media showing a huge wall of snow moving down from the Dômes de Miage, which the glacier is a part of.
It was not clear if the video shows the avalanche in which the people died.
One eyewitness told France Television that she was hiking just in front of the Armancette glacier when she saw the avalanche happening and took out her phone to film it.
"I had put the phone in front of me but then I was looking with my eyes more than in the lens and suddenly there was a huge, huge, huge cloud that came down to the bottom, it split into two," she said.
"I think of the families, I think of the people, of those who got out of it, who had the fright of their life, of those who are still there."
The nearby resort urged people to be careful if they were venturing off-piste - away from the prepared ski runs.
Officials have told the AFP news agency that a further avalanche could not be ruled out.
Two brothers died in an avalanche on the same glacier in 2014. They were both experienced mountaineers and had been properly equipped.
- BBC
