Five South Koreans and their four guides were killed during the Himalayas, after a large piece of snow fell on a rocky slope at a narrow mountain pass, a rescue official said on Monday.
Rescue official Suraj Bodial, who is involved in the exhumation of the bodies scattered over a wide mountain area, said the incident apparently took place on Thursday or Friday.
"Some of the bodies are scattered on the side of a rocky slope and there are other bodies in the valley," he said.
"A huge mass of ice, almost 100 meters (yards) from the mountain, probably fell into a narrow passageway, causing strong winds that hit the camp and dropped the climbers from the edge of the rocky slope to the valley," he told Reuters on Monday.
He did not explain how he was able to determine the sequence of events. Nepali authorities said they had no details of the incident in a remote area.
Nepal is making arrangements to repatriate the bodies of South Koreans after an autopsy. The South Korean embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, could not be reached for comment.
It is the worst disaster of its kind in Nepal since 2015 when 18 climbers died in an avalanche due to a major earthquake at Mount Everest.
The team was trying to climb the 1,793-meter-high Mount Gurga mountain, led by South Korean climber Kim Chang, the record-breaking climber in climbing 14 of the world's highest mountains.
