Uttarakhand: 16 bodies recovered in total from the avalanche site of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering

Dehradun: As of Thursday, sixteen bodies in total have been recovered, two days after a team of climbers from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering were trapped by an avalanche in Uttarkashi, the institute said.

Twenty-two mountaineers are still believed to be missing. The avalanche hit Draupadi Ka Danda II peak at a height of 17,000 feet on Tuesday when the team was returning after summiting.

According to the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM), the recovery of five more bodies takes the number of bodies retrieved so far to nine after four were recovered on the day of the avalanche. Of the nine bodies, seven are of trainees and two of instructors.

Uttarakhand Police had said on its Facebook page on Wednesday that 10 bodies had been retrieved.

Earlier in the day, the State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC) here said, without accounting for the five bodies recovered, that of NIM's 61-member advance training course team, including trainees and instructors, four bodies had been recovered, 30 were safe and 27 still missing.

Earlier in the day, a 14-member team from High Altitude Warfare School based in Gulmarg in Jammu and Kashmir joined the rescue operation for the missing mountaineers.

The team, which specialises in high-altitude rescue operations, will help in the joint efforts by the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and mountaineers from NIM in their efforts to find the missing climbers, the SEOC said.