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The
army said five to six vehicles carrying up to 30 tourists on the
way to Nathu La, a mountain pass between Sikkim and the Chinese
region of Tibet, were feared to have been stuck under the snow
when the avalanche hit.
The incident took place at 11:30 a.m. (0600 GMT), the army
statement said.
"We are yet to ascertain how many people are still trapped. 17
people have been rescued, out of which 8 are very critical and
have been moved to a hospital," senior police official Tenzing
Loden Lepcha told Reuters on phone.
Rescue officials earlier said they feared at least 70 people
were under the snow.
Rescue operations were ongoing at the site, Loden Lepcha said,
adding that when the avalanche hit, people were taking
photographs near a stream.
An ANI video showed local residents crowding around rescue
workers and filming videos on mobile phones at the site of the
accident.
Thousands of tourists flock to Sikkim every year, also known as
the "Land of Mystic Splendour", located below Mount
Khangchendzonga, also known as Kanchenjunga, the third highest
mountain in the world.
(Reporting by Zarir Hussain in Guwahati, Shivam Patel in New
Delhi, Subrata Nagchoudhary in Kolkata and Shubhendu Deshmukh in
Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Frank Jack Daniel)
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