Hiker killed on Mont Blanc

Saint-Gervais (France), Aug 24 (IANS/AKI) A 28-year-old man was found dead Thursday on the Fosses ridge on the French side of Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain, after he vanished while hiking on August 15.

The man was dressed in light hiking gear and fell to his death near the location where a 46-year-old man's body was found at the bottom of a crevasse on August 17, according to Saint Gervais Mayor Jean-Marc Peillex.

Police in Chamonix are still identifying the two men.

Three badly decomposed bodies found by a climber on the Miage glacier on the Mont Blanc massif on Wednesday may be those of a group of climbers that disappeared more than 20 years ago, said police.

A wallet recovered close to one of the corpses contained a German ID card from 1995 belonging to a 23-year-old man, police said.

The three bodies were probably covered by ice for decades which melted in the high summer temperatures, according to police.

There have been a series of fatal accidents over the past month on Mont Blanc, which straddles Italy's northwest border with France.

Climbers from France, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Ukraine perished while trying to scale the mountain's heights and the search for a missing Japanese climber was called off last week.

--IANS/AKI

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