Seven climbers were injured and eight were missing, most likely dead, after an avalanche hit Mont Blanc on Sunday. The missing include five Austrians and three Swiss and there is little hope to none that they are still alive after being swept down the northern face of Mont Blanc in the French Alps before dawn.

It appears that around 100 climbers have been killed in the Alps since 1 June in France, Italy and Switzerland, with about two dozen in Mont Blanc, western Europe's highest mountain. The avalanche was set off, by most accounts, by the fall of a massive block of ice at an altitude of some 11,800 feet.

Only three of the injured are still in hospital, mainly with broken bones or sprains. Also, a guide suffered a broken vertebra but has no risk of paralysis. Further rescue attempts have been canceled, fearing that it is too risky to attempt to find the eight still missing, as there is almost no chance that they can be found alive.

France's interior minister Michele Alliot-Marie said that the government's technology had detected people buried in the snow, but it was impossible to know how many they were exactly. Despite the eight presumed dead, the rescue efforts have been impressive, managing to actually dig out from deep inside the snow most of the seven survivors, while only some of them managed to free themselves on their own.