BONDO, Switzerland - Swiss officials on Saturday called off a search for eight people missing since a huge landslide struck near the border with Italy, acknowledging they were likely to be buried under millions of tons of rock.
The small village of Bondo was partly buried on Wednesday under meters of collapsing mountain, and regional police said they were expecting more rock- and mudslides in the area.
The missing, all hikers, are two Austrians, four Germans and two Swiss.
“We have done everything we could to search for these eight people,” lieutenant Andrea Mittner of the Grisons canton police told a news conference broadcast on Swiss television.
“We used helicopters, dogs and rescue teams and we still did not find anybody. We have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we will not find anybody.”
