Nepal blizzard, avalanche death toll rises to 27

KATMANDU - Search teams in army helicopters rescued dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and recovered more bodies of victims of a blizzard and avalanches in the mountains of northern Nepal on Thursday, raising the death toll to 27, officials said.

About 70 people were still missing along or near the popular Annapurna trail, said Ganga Sagar Pant of the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal, and the death toll there was expected to rise.

"I was sure I was going to die on the way to the pass because I lost my group, I lost all the people I was with and I could not see anything," said Linor Kajan, an injured trekker from Israel, who said she was stuck in waist-deep snow.