Kathmandu - SPA
At least 50 trekkers were rescued from Nepal's central district of Manang after a snowstorm killed at least 29 hikers, authorities said Saturday, according to dpa.
The operation brought to 390 the number of people rescued after Tuesday's storm, which has left dozens of people missing.
The nearby Lamjung district office said rescue personnel there had airlifted 49 trekkers and a Nepali trekking guide from Manang.
'Altogether, 50 trekkers, most of whom were Israelis, were rescued from different villages in Manang where they had been stranded,' said Shrawan Kumar Timilsina, the chief district officer of Lamjung. 'They are all safe and unhurt.'
Reports said contact had been lost with dozens of hikers in the western mountains of Dolpa, but the chief district officer, Krishna Prasad Khanal, said he had no such information.
'We airlifted 15 weary trekkers, but they are all right,' he said.
'We've received information that a group headed to Mount Putha in Upper Dolpa is also safe.'
The snowstorm hit Manang and Mustang districts in Nepal's central mountains in the aftermath of Cyclone Hudhud in neighbouring India.
Authorities mounted a fourth day of searches for the missing while some survivors nursed frostbite and emotional scars.
'I'm safe here, but I don't feel peace,' a Swiss trekker who identified himself as Alfred said from a hospital in Kathmandu.
He had headed downhill with his trekking guide when disaster struck, but he lost some of his trekking companions, he said.