By Anja Niedringhaus and Angela Charlton
French officials say that two people remain unaccounted for in the Alpine avalanche that took at least nine lives and injured 12 other people.
Officials had earlier said that four climbers trying to scale Mont Blanc were unaccounted for after the Thursday morning avalanche.
A statement by the office of the prefecture in the Haute-Savoie region noted that the number of people reported involved in the incident could vary as more information comes out.
It says that at least 28 people left a mountain refuge to try to make the ascent, but some may have turned around.
Those killed are all Europeans. The statement says an American was among the injured, the only non-European.
A climber trying to scale Mont Blanc accidentally caused a slab of ice to snap off Thursday high in the French Alps, sparking an avalanche that swept nine European climbers to their deaths, authorities said. Eleven other climbers were hospitalized and at least two were still unaccounted for.
As a sheet of snow and ice thundered down the steep slope, several other climbers managed to turn away from the slide in time, regional authorities in Haute-Savoie said.
Two other climbers were rescued as emergency crews using dogs and helicopters scoured the churned-up, high-altitude area in a frantic search for the missing. Their quest, hampered by the possibility of further avalanches, was called off before nightfall.
Three Britons, three Germans and two Spaniards were among the dead, their governments confirmed. The other victim was from Switzerland, according to police in the French mountain town of Chamonix.
Early summer storms apparently left behind heavy snow that combined with high winds to form dangerous overhanging conditions on some of the popular climbing routes around Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in western Europe. Regional authorities had warned climbers earlier this summer to be careful because of an unusually snowy spring.
The Mont Blanc massif is a popular area for climbers, hikers and tourists but a dangerous one, with dozens dying on it each year. Chamonix, a top center for climbing, hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924.
Some of the climbers were with professional guides, others were climbing independently.
Police said they were alerted around 5:25 a.m. Thursday to the avalanche, which hit a group of climbers - people from Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, Denmark and Serbia - who were some 4,000m high on the north face of Mont Maudit, part of the Mont Blanc range.
A block of ice 40cm thick broke off and slid down the slope, creating a mass of snow that was 2m deep and 50m long.
"The first elements that we have from testimony are that a climber could have set loose a sheet of ice, and that sheet then pulled down the group of climbers below. I should say the incline was very, very steep on this northern face," Col. Bertrand François of the Haute-Savoie police told reporters.
It was not immediately known if the climber lived or died.
According to recent tweets from climbers, high winds led to overhanging ice slabs forming on the slope. Several days ago Chamonix saw a monsoon-like downpour which turned to snow at 3,000m high.
Jonas Moestrup from the western Danish city of Randers heard about the accident as he was on his way down from Mont Blanc.
"Three days ago, we ascended it [Mont Maudit]. It was shocking to hear, it could easily have been us," he told the Danish news agency Ritzau by telephone. "It is scary and tragic."
Still, he noted the allure of those foreboding, majestic Alpine peaks.
"It's part of the thrill that something can go wrong," he told Ritzau.
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls flew over the site later Thursday, describing it as "a particularly spectacular block of ice." He said the climbers appeared to be an experienced group, and that the churned-up snow had made the search particularly difficult.
French investigators will examine the circumstances of the deaths.
AP