An avalanche slammed into a group of Turkish hikers on a trip
to a remote mountain plateau on Sunday, dragging them more
than 500 metres into a valley and fatally burying 10.
The members of a skiing and mountaineering club were taking
part in an annual winter sports celebration on 2200-metre
Mount Zigana. Seventeen were hiking single-file when the
avalanche swept into them.
"We looked up and there was nowhere to run. The snow took us
and dragged us along," 61-year-old Kasim Keles told reporters
from his hospital bed.
"The snow dragged me down into a valley before it stopped,"
Keles said.
"My right hand was stuck beneath me, with my left hand I
cleared my face; I began to breathe and called for help."
A fellow hiker who escaped unharmed dug Keles out of the snow
by hand.
Faruk Ozak, Turkey's minister in charge of public works and
housing who visited the site, said 10 hikers died on the
mountain. Two of the hikers were hospitalised, while five
walked away unharmed, he said.
Military and private mountain rescue teams assisted by
sniffer dogs carried out a search in case others were trapped
beneath the snow. Rescue workers could be seen probing with
long rods and digging through several metres of snow with
shovels until sunset, when the search was called off for the
day.
Television footage showed soldiers and villagers struggling
through the snow to carry a person lying on a makeshift
stretcher.
"We were walking and before we realised what was going on,
the avalanche came on us," Ural Ayar, one of the survivors,
told NTV television by telephone.
"The snow dragged our friends along and unfortunately they
were buried."
The Zigana festival was meant to attract skiers to the small,
mainly cross-country ski resort some 100km from the Black Sea
coast. It was not clear what triggered the avalanche. There
had been no warning of a possible snow slide.
The Turkish avalanche occurred a day after three people were
killed in an avalanche on a mountain in the Scottish
Highlands.
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