Searchers rescue two left for dead after avalanche

Searchers rescued two reindeer herders today who had been left for dead after an avalanche roared through a village on Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, killing nine others, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

The ministry had reported yesterday that 11 people, including four children, were killed in the avalanche in the village of Tymlad, in the Koryak Autonomous Region on the peninsula, about 4,200 miles east of Moscow.

Spokesman Viktor Beltsov said today that the emergency workers had pulled out four bodies before nightfall and, from a distance, had seen seven others with no signs of life before abandoning their recovery efforts at nightfall.

They renewed their work today and found the two men alive.

Beltsov said they had severe frostbite after being buried in snow for six days.