Three people died and another was injured in an avalanche near Zermatt, one of Switzerland's most famous skiing and mountaineering resorts. The Valais cantonal police announced this, specifying on X that "the searches were suspended in the evening".
The avalanche, according to the video images transmitted in particular on X, occurred in the afternoon in the Riffelberg off-piste area, on the heights of the municipality of Zermatt.
Considerable rescue resources, including aircraft, were immediately deployed to try to help the victims. Heavy snowfall and very strong winds have prompted local authorities to warn of the strong risk of avalanches in the Alpine regions of southern Switzerland.
Today, Easter Monday, the danger was great in some areas of the canton of Grisons and Valais. "Very large, sometimes extremely large, natural avalanches can be expected," the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) reported earlier in the day.
According to the report published on March 27 by the SLF, this winter fourteen people, mostly cross-country skiers, lost their lives in avalanches in Switzerland.
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