Reuters, Kathmandu :Nepali police and local volunteers found the bodies of about 100 trekkers and villagers buried in an avalanche set off by last month’s devastating earthquake and were digging through snow and ice for signs of dozens more missing, officials said on Monday.The bodies were recovered on Saturday and Sunday at the Langtang village, 60 kilometres(40 miles) north of Kathmandu, which is on a trekking route popular with Westerners. The entire village, which includes 55 guesthouses for trekkers, was wiped out by the avalanche, officials said.Gautam Rimal, assistant chief district officer in the area where Langtang is located.The dead include at least 7 foreigners but only two had been identified, he said.It was not clear how many people were in Langtang at the time of the avalanche but other officials said about 120 more people could be buried under the snow.”We had not been able to reach the area earlier because of rains and cloudy weather,” Uddhav Bhattarai, the district’s senior bureaucrat, said by telephone on Sunday.The April 25 earthquake has killed 7,276 people and wounded over 14,300, Nepal’s government said.At least 18 of the deaths were on Mount Everest, where avalanches hit the slopes of the world’s highest peak. The government said on Monday that it had not closed the mountain to climbers, although the route up to the peak was damaged.
