The body of a young woman has been found inside a machine that scoops and sucks up snow at a ski resort in the Pyrenees.

French police said the circumstances of the accident are unclear and the identity of the woman has not been released.

Officials with the gendarme services and the administration for the Pyrenees-Orientales region said an investigation is under way into the accident at the Les Angles ski resort, close to France's border with Andorra and Spain.

Resort director Jerome Meunier said that it is unclear whether the woman was walking or lying on the ground when the machine hit her.

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