(CNN) — An avalanche that crashed through a camp on Nepal’s Mount Yalung Ri on Monday has killed at least seven people, including five foreign climbers and two Nepali guides, officials said.

At least 15 people were climbing the 5,630-meter (18,471–foot) mountain when the avalanche struck base camp around 10:30 a.m. local time, Gyan Kumar Mahato, the deputy superintendent of police in Nepal’s Dolakha district, said.

Two Italian nationals, two Nepalis and climbers from France, Germany and Canada were among the dead, according to the Dolakha district administration office.

The bodies of two of the climbers have been recovered, Mahato told CNN, and rescuers were digging through the ice and snow to reach the other five bodies.

Eight people were injured in the avalanche, according to the administration office. Mahato previously said five Nepali guides and porters were able to make their own way back to base camp, located at 4,900 meters (16,070 feet).

Authorities initially said three people had died, before updating that figure, as well as the number of climbers on the mountain, on Tuesday.

Weather has been deteriorating since last week in Nepal, with snowstorms reported on the mountains, the Associated Press reported.

Search and rescue teams launched an hours-long operation to reach the climbers but the weather conditions, high altitude and difficult terrain complicated their efforts.

“There’s a problem of oxygen also,” Mahato told CNN. “Only trained people who live in hilly, mountain areas can conduct rescue operations. That’s why we are coordinating with local climbers and guides. The weather is a challenge too, it’s constantly changing.”

The weather cleared enough for a helicopter to land with a search and rescue team on Tuesday, AP reported.

Among those injured was French climber Isabelle Solange Thaon, 54, who told AP from her hospital bed in the capital Kathmandu that she lost her husband, Christian Manfred, in the avalanche.

“We were lucky because we were on the left,” Thaon said, adding that they leapt over the rocks and swam in the snow until help arrived to pull them out, according to the news agency.

“Unfortunately, Christian died… because rocks hit his head,” she said.

Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 tallest mountains, including Mount Everest.

Mountaineering expedition companies describe Mount Yalung Ri, located in eastern Nepal’s Rolwaling Valley, as a peak suitable for beginners with no previous experience or for those acclimatizing for higher summits of the Himalayas, which can tower above 8,000 meters.

Spring is the most popular climbing season, when weather is more favorable on those tall peaks. However, hundreds of foreign climbers come to scale smaller peaks during the autumn months between the rainy monsoon months and winter, according to AP.

Mahato said that while the avalanche occurred “suddenly,” authorities had warned climbers in the region about the rain and imminent monsoon.

“But they had started their climb before the monsoon occurred,” he said.

In a separate incident, the bodies of two Italian climbers were recovered on Tuesday during search and rescue operations on the 6,887-meter (22,595-foot) Mount Panbari, in Nepal’s western Manaslu region.

Three Italian climbers had been reported missing on the mountain after they lost contact on October 29 following heavy snowfall, the district’s deputy superintendent of police, Gorkha Raj Kumar Shrestha, told CNN. One of the climbers had been rescued at base camp on Sunday.

The bodies of the other two, identified as Stefano Farronato, 51, and Alessandro Caputo, 28, were found buried in the snow at camp one on Tuesday, Shrestha said.

Man-made climate change has made weather patterns less predictable, including in the Himalayas.

Last month hundreds of trekkers had to be rescued from the northern Chinese side of Everest after unusually heavy snow and rainfall pummeled the Himalayas.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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