Bodies of five missing skiers have been found in the Swiss Alps, police said, while another remains missing.

Local authorities are searching to find the missing person.

A search operation was launched on Saturday (March 9, 2024) after the group went missing near the 3,706m high Tete Blanche mountain.

They had set off from Zermatt, home of the famous Matterhorn mountain, on a ski tour towards Arolla along the Swiss-Italian border, reported BBC.

Authorities had previously told the BBC that the skiers were all Swiss nationals, and range in age from 21 to 58 years old.

Police said teams were alerted on both sides of the route but severe weather hampered the operation.

Anjan Truffer, the head of Zermatt's air rescue service, told the BBC that the weather was so bad that "flying is not an option", with "very strong winds, heavy snow, high avalanche danger, and zero visibility".

Truffer said that the group may have been overcome by the bad weather, rather than struck by an avalanche, because they went missing on a part of the Zermatt Arolla route where the risk of avalanche is low

The incident is one of the deadliest reported in the Swiss Apls in recent times.