Search Efforts Halted In Australian Avalanche

Police officials in Zell am See said the poor weather conditions and high risk of further avalanches prevented the search from continuing Thursday. There are no other reports of anyone else missing, but state police believed there could be more.

Ten people were found dead in the area of the huge snow slide south of Salzburg and another died at a hospital. Two others were able to free themselves while rescuers dug out a third survivor.

The search was suspended at sundown Tuesday and was to have resumed at dawn Wednesday. But low visibility hampered operations. Officials said the risk of further avalanches was high. Authorities are hoping to continue on Friday.

Most of the victims were training to be ski instructors. They included six Austrians, one Slovak, two Finns, one Belgian and one Dane.

Flower-decorated coffins containing the bodies of nine of the victims were brought Wednesday to a church in Niedernsill for an ecumenical memorial service later in the afternoon.

Meanwhile police were interviewing a 23-year-old Czech who survived the avalanche and remained hospitalized in Zell am See, to try to determine how it began.

One trainee told Austrian state television an instructor caused the slide whose skis set loose a wall of snow. However, the Austria Press Agency said two snowboarders had apparently started the avalanche and were believed to be among the victims.

Anyone still buried under the thick wall of snow would have virtually no chance to survive. It was the fourth major deadly avalanche in Austria in a little more than a year.

Two snow slides on Feb. 23, 1999, killed 38 people in the region of Galtuer, in Tyrol. In December, two more avalanches in Tyrolean skiing areas killed 11 people.