Srinagar: Five dead bodies have been recovered while efforts are on to trace the remaining five after ten people came under a snow avalanche at Khardung La pass in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh Friday morning.

Disaster management department official, Aamir Ali said that five dead bodies have been recovered from the avalanche site while search operation is on to trace the remaining remaining five.

Meanwhile the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council officials said that the rescue operation is still underway. “We have spoken to Union Ministers Rajnath Singh & Dr Jitendra Singh about the rescue operation being conducted.”

Rescuers from the district administration, police and the State Disaster Relief Force are at the site, which is 40 km from Leh town. Reports said that a Scorpio vehicle was hit by a giant wall of snow.

Jammu and Kashmir has been witnessing heavy snowfall in the past few days. The Met department on Thursday issued an avalanche warning for nine districts of Jammu and Kashmir— Anantnag, Budgam, Baramulla, , Bandipora, Ganderbal, Kargil, Kulgam, Kupwara and Leh.

Divisional administration had warned people not to move around in avalanche prone areas, store enough edibles and other essentials as both surface and air connectivity is likely to remain disrupted during this period.

The weather office has forecast another spell of snow from January 19 to 23 in Kashmir due to heavy precipitation.The MeT department has asked people to plan their travel accordingly.