At least ten people have been killed and four are missing after an avalanche swept away climbers and their camps on the world's eighth highest mountain in northwestern Nepal today.
Mountaineering officials in Nepal and France said they had been told most of the dead climbers were French.
The other victims were from Italy, Germany and Spain.
Five injured climbers were rescued by helicopters and flown to the capital Kathmandu.
Police inspector Basant Mishra said the bodies of a German climber and a Nepali guide were recovered from the snow on the 8,163-metre Mount Manaslu, about 100km northwest of Kathmandu.
Mishra said; "Rescue pilots have spotted seven other bodies on the mountain."
At least five injured people had been rescued by helicopters and flown to Kathmandu, he said.
Sources at the Spanish Foreign Ministry said one of the dead climbers was Spanish.
The accident took place at a height of 7,000 metres, making it difficult for land rescue teams to reach the scene.
Helicopters were dispatched to the remote area to look for those missing after the early morning accident, but cloud and fog were complicating rescue efforts, Mishra said.
Details about the avalanche and the nationalities of the missing climbers were not clear.
Hundreds of foreign climbers flock every year to Himalayan peaks in Nepal, which has eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest.
September marks the beginning of the autumn climbing season which runs through November.
In the last major accident in the area, at least 42 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed in heavy snowfall in the Mount Everest region in 1995.
