DHAKA: Rescuers have recovered the body of another mountain guide after an ice avalanche on the lower slopes of Mount Everest, bringing the death toll to at least 13 in the deadliest accident on the world’s highest mountain.

Officials said that Saturday’s recovery of the body still left three sherpas uaccounted for, reports Al Jazeera.

The avalanche struck a perilous passage called the Khumbu Icefall, which is riddled with crevasses and piled with serac or huge chunks of ice, that can break free without warning.

Ang Kami Sherpa, 25, one of at least three survivors told Reuters news agency the guides ‘couldn’t run away’, as ice from the mountain hurtled down at them.

Climbers declared a four-day halt to efforts to scale the 8,848-metre summit and, while some decided to abandon their mission. Some others said they would go ahead after talking to their guides.

All of the victims were sherpa mountain guides.

‘Everyone is shaken here at Base Camp. Some climbers are packing up and calling it quits, they want nothing to do with this,’ Tim Rippel of Peak Freaks Expeditions wrote in a blog.

BDST: 2027 HRS, APR 19, 2014