At least 12 Nepalese guides preparing routes up Mount Everest for commercial climbers have been killed by an avalanche in the most deadly mountaineering accident ever on the world's highest peak, officials and rescuers say.
The men were among a large party of Sherpas carrying tents, food and ropes who headed out in bright sunshine in an early morning expedition on Friday ahead of the main climbing season starting later this month.
Four of them are still missing, tourism officials said, while one rescuer at the scene said he expected the death toll to rise by at least three after other bodies were spotted but not retrieved.
The avalanche occurred at an altitude of about 5800 metres in an area nicknamed the "popcorn field", due to boulders of ice that lie on the route leading into the treacherous Khumbu icefall.
"We have retrieved 12 bodies from the snow," Nepal tourism ministry official Dipendra Paudel told AFP in Kathmandu.
He said that deteriorating weather conditions had forced rescuers to suspend searches for the missing climbers until Saturday morning.
"We do not want to risk another accident," he said.
Assisted by rescue helicopters, at least seven people were plucked alive from the ice and snow on Friday with the injured sent by helicopter to a hospital in the capital.
Kathmandu-based expert Elizabeth Hawley, considered the world's leading authority on Himalayan climbing, said the avalanche was the most deadly single accident in the history of mountaineering on the peak Everest.
The previous worst accident occurred in 1996 when eight people were killed during a rogue storm while attempting to summit the mountain, which was first conquered in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
The 1996 tragedy was immortalised in the best-selling book Into Thin Air written by US mountaineering journalist Jon Krakauer and is the subject of a Hollywood film under production.
"This is the absolutely the worst disaster on Everest, no question," Hawley told AFP.
Kathmandu-based climbing company Himalayan Climbing Guides Nepal confirmed that two of their guides were among the dead and four were missing.
"When our guides left base camp, there was no snowfall, the weather was just fantastic," operations manager Bhim Paudel told AFP.
Dozens of guides from other companies crossed the icefall safely before the avalanche struck, Paudel said.
"We expected to follow them, we had no warning at all," he said.
