Alpine glacier chunk detaches, leaving at least 6 hikers dead

ROME >> A large chunk of an Alpine glacier broke loose Sunday and roared down a mountain in Italy, sending ice, snow and rock slamming into hikers on a popular trail on the peak and killing at least six and injuring nine, authorities said, warning that the toll might climb.

A local Civil Protection official, Gianpaolo Bottacin, was quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA as providing the toll, but stressing that the situation was “evolving” and that there could be perhaps 15 people missing.

In late evening, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted a phone number to call for family or friends in case of “failure to return from possible excursions” to the glacier.

Rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of checks to determine how many people might be unaccounted for, a process that could take hours, Corps spokesman Walter Milan told The Associated Press by telephone.

The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy and people ski there in the winter. But the glacier has been rapidly melting away in recent years.

Experts at Italy's staterun CNR research center, which has a polar sciences institute, says the glacier won't exist anymore in the next 25-30 years and much of its volume is already gone.

The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, has been identified by U.N. experts as a “climate change hot spot,” likely to suffer heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.

“We saw dead (people) and enormous chunks of ice, rock,” exhausted-looking rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state TV.

Nationalities or ages of the dead weren't immediately available, Milan said.

Of the hospitalized survivors, two were in grave condition, authorities said.