DUSHANBE, February 1 (RIA Novosti) - Twelve people have died and eight are still missing after an avalanche hit Tajikistan, the republic's Emergency Situations Ministry said Wednesday.
But the ministry said that 18 people had been rescued after the major avalanche engulfed a group of 38 people in the Jirgatal Region, 250 kilometers (160 miles) southeast of Dushanbe, the capital of the Central Asian republic. So far, 12 bodies have been recovered, and eight people remain missing.
In a separate incident, the ministry reported that one person had died in an avalanche in the Gorno-Badakhshan area in the east of the country.
