100 bodies found in quake-hit Nepal’s trekking region

 Nepali police and local volunteers found the bodies of about 100 trekkers and villagers buried in an avalanche set off by last month s devastating earthquake and were digging through snow and ice for signs of dozens more missing, officials said on Monday.

The government began asking foreign teams to wrap up search and rescue operations, as hope of finding people alive in the rubble receded They can leave. If they are also specialists in clearing the rubble, they can stay," Rameshwor Dangal, an official at Nepal ’s home ministry, told Reuters on MondayThe trekkers  bodies were recovered on Saturday and Sunday at the Langtang village,.

It was not clear how many people were in Langtang at the time of the avalanche but other officials said about 120 more people could be buried under the snow

"We had not been able to reach the area earlier because of rains and cloudy weather," Uddhav Bhattarai, the district s senior bureaucrat, said by telephone on Sunday.

The chief of India s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), which was among the first foreign organisations to arrive after the quake, said it had been asked by the Nepalese government to conclude its search and rescue operation."All the search and rescue teams, not the relief (teams) … have been asked to return," NDRF Director General O.P. Singh told Indian television. "We will see how best it can be done

"Climbers at base camp don t think the route will be fixed anytime soon," said Tulsi Prasad Gautam, a senior official at Nepals tourism department. "It\’s up to the climbers and the organisers who are at base camp to take a decision: we are not asking them to do one thing or another."