Nepali police and local volunteers found the bodies of about 100 trekkers and villagers buried in an avalanche set off by last month’s devastating earthquake and were digging through snow and ice for signs of dozens more missing, officials said yesterday.

The government began asking foreign teams to wrap up search and rescue operations, as hope of finding people alive in the rubble receded.

“They can leave. If they are also specialists in clearing the rubble, they can stay,” Rameshwor Dangal, an official at Nepal’s home ministry, said yesterday.

The trekkers’ bodies were recovered on Saturday and Sunday at the Langtang village, 60 kilometres north of Kathmandu, which is on a trekking route popular with Westerners. The entire village, which includes 55 guesthouses for trekkers, was wiped out by the avalanche, officials said.

“Local volunteers and police personnel are digging through six-feet deep snow with shovels looking for more bodies,” said Gautam Rimal, assistant chief district officer in the area where Langtang is located. The dead include at least seven foreigners but only two had been identified, he said.

It was not clear how many people were in Langtang at the time of the avalanche but other officials said about 120 more people could be buried under the snow.

“We had not been able to reach the area earlier because of rains and cloudy weather,” Uddhav Bhattarai, the district’s senior bureaucrat, said by telephone on Sunday.

The April 25 earthquake has killed 7,366 people and wounded nearly 14,500, Nepal’s government said. The disaster has prompted an international relief and rescue effort.

A European Union source yesterday revised sharply downwards to about 60 the number of citizens from the 28-nation bloc still unaccounted for. Last week a senior EU source had estimated around 1,000 EU citizens were missing after the quake.

The number is “going down by the hour” as rescue teams reach remoter areas, the EU source said.