Three people are missing after an avalanche overwhelmed 10 skiers in the Bavarian Alps in the south of Germany, mountain rescue services said on Monday. Seven people escaped by digging themselves out, but rescuers are being hampered from reaching those trapped by bad weather and the risk of further avalanches, said a mountain rescue spokesman in the town of Bad Reichenhall, near the Austrian city of Salzburg. "The weather is so bad -- we have zero visibility and there is no chance we can fly up there with helicopters," the spokesman said in a statement carried by Reuters. "The chances of survival are 90 percent for the first 15 minutes, but drop to 10-15 percent after an hour," he added.
