According to the NTB news agency, two people have died in an avalanche on a remote island in the European Arctic Ocean. They were two civilian employees of the military station on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen, the Norwegian military said last night.
A third person was able to extricate himself from the masses of snow after going down Saturday afternoon and make it back to the station with minor injuries.
According to the military, the three people were on a leisure trip when they were surprised by the avalanche just outside the station. The personnel started a rescue operation for the buried and discovered the two missing. According to the Norwegian news agency NTB, the two dead were a woman in her fifties and a man aged between 30 and 40.
The Norwegian military has permanently deployed personnel to Jan Mayen, and in winter the crew is 18 strong. The island lies about 1,000 kilometres northwest of Norway and north of Iceland, isolated on the border between the European North Sea and the Greenland Sea.
Source: NTB
