Nepal is ending rescue operations in its northern mountains today, saying all the hikers believed to have been stranded on a trekking route by a series of deadly blizzards are now safe.

Search and rescue teams have found the bodies of eight more trekkers killed in a series of blizzards and avalanches in central Nepal in recent days, raising the death toll to 25.

About 200 trekkers and their guides have been stranded by heavy snows in the Himalayan mountains in north-west Nepal for the past five days, an official said today.