6 hikers were killed after Alpine glacier breaks in the Alps

6 hikers were killed after Alpine glacier breaks in the Alps. 

At least six people were killed, and eight were wounded when a sizable portion of an Alpine glacier came away on Sunday afternoon and fell down a slope in Italy. The hikers were on a well-traveled path on the top.

According to Civil Protection officer Gianpaolo Bottacin, there may be as many as ten persons missing, according to the online edition of the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. 

Bottin subsequently admitted to state television that a precise figure couldn’t be given just yet.

The Marmolada range’s glacier, the biggest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy, is where tourists go skiing in the winter. However, in recent years, the glacier has been quickly melting away.

The glacier will cease to exist in the next 25 to 30 years, according to specialists at Italy’s government-run CNR research center, which houses a polar sciences institution. 

The majority of the glacier’s volume has already disappeared. According to U.N. scientists, the Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa, is a “climate change hot area” that would likely experience heat waves and water shortages, among other effects.

According to Walter Milan, a national Alpine rescue corps spokesman, who supplied the fatality and injury toll, authorities were still trying to ascertain how many hikers were there when the ice avalanche hit as of Sunday evening.

Rescuers were looking at license plates in the parking lot as part of their investigations to see how many people could still be missing, which could take hours, Milan told The Associated Press over the phone.

“Rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state television, “We saw dead (people) and large slabs of ice, rock.” Luigi Felicetti seemed fatigued.

According to Milan, the dead’s nationalities or ages weren’t immediately known. According to the officials, two of the eight hospitalized survivors were in critical condition.

The quickly spreading avalanche “came down with a noise that could be heard for miles,′′, according to the local online news source Dolomiti.

Earlier, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps stated that rescue dogs and at least five helicopters were used in search of the Marmolada peak’s affected area.

After leading a rescue operation with a search dog, Walter Cainelli informed state television that the hunt for any other dead or missing persons had temporarily been put on hold. 

At the same time, rescuers assessed the likelihood that more of the glacier may break off.

Rescuers reported that ice slabs continued to fall. Then, early in the evening, a gentle drizzle started to fall.