Update | Twelve Nepali guides killed by avalanche in worst-ever Everest accident

An avalanche swept down a slope of Mount Everest on Friday killing 12 Nepali mountaineering guides at the beginning of the main climbing season, a Tourism Ministry official said.

The avalanche, the deadliest in eight years, hit the most popular route to the mountain’s peak. Three Nepali guides were injured and up to five people were missing, said Dipendra Paudel at the Tourism Ministry’s mountaineering department.

It was the first major avalanche on Mount Everest this climbing season, when hundreds of foreign and Nepali climbers flock to the mountain to attempt to reach its 8,850 metre (29,035 feet) peak.

The avalanche hit the sherpa guides relatively low on the mountain, between base camp and camp 1, early on Friday, ministry officials said.

Helicopters and rescuers on foot had been sent to the site, said senior ministry official Madhusudan Burlakoti.

More than 4,000 climbers have scaled Everest’s summit since it was first climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in 1953. The route they took is the one hit by the avalanche on Friday.