Spanish mountain rescue services on Wednesday said they had resumed a search for five people missing in the Pyrenees, in a region where six people have already died in severe winter snowstorms.
A spokesman for fire fighting and mountain rescue services in the Catalan region said they were not optimistic about the chances of finding the missing people alive.
The five were members of two groups, one of three walkers and another of five cross-country skiers, who went missing in snowstorms last weekend.
The bodies of two of the eight group members have already been found, and another person was found alive but suffering from hypothermia.
The search, involving a team of around 50 people, was centered on a small and remote valley in the Balandrau region, to the north of the town of Ripoll, officials said, adding that frozen snow made the work difficult.
Both groups had left from Barcelona, the Catalan capital.
The other casualties of the weekend in the Spanish Pyrenees were two young skiers who died of cold in the same region and two skiers who died in avalanches further to the west, one near the mountain principality of Andorra and the other in the Aragon region -- BARCELONA (AFP)
