Chilean army finds more bodies in Andes tragedy

LOS ANGELES, Chile - Hundreds of searchers piercing the snow with stakes and combing the mountain with dogs on Sunday recovered the bodies of five more of the 45 young soldiers who froze to death in the Andes in the country's worst peacetime military tragedy.

Families began to bury 26 of the mostly teenage victims found so far and the army said it would continue to search for 19 still missing after a regiment of ill-equipped young recruits hiked into a blizzard on Wednesday.

"It's really slow work," Major Eugenio Marzal told a local television station that showed lines of soldiers grimly searching the slopes of the Antuco volcano near the Argentine border.

Wind and snow complicated the fifth search day, but the army said it would continue on Monday.

"Today was a difficult step and tomorrow's going to be tougher because we're expecting bad conditions," Army Commander in Chief Juan Cheyre told a press conference.

As the army gave up hope of finding survivors, furious families in the southern city of Los Angeles, where the soldiers were based, raged against officers for ordering the recruits to march off the mountain despite storm warnings.

Cheyre has also blamed the officers on the mountain exercise, dismissed the three top commanders of the 17th Reinforced Regiment and ordered civilian and military investigations into the tragedy.

"What hurts the most is that the death of dozens of youngsters was easily avoidable," La Tercera newspaper said in an editorial. "Those in charge of the regiment did not heed the weather warning and walked into a fatal trap." President Ricardo Lagos declared three days of national mourning and attended a memorial for 13 of the dead in flag-draped coffins at the army base in Los Angeles.

Most of the victims are teenage recruits from poor families, who enlisted just a month ago and whose regiment went on a mountain training exercise without proper gear during an early-winter storm that blinded and disoriented the group.

They were so new to the army they did not even have metal identification tags, El Mercurio newspaper reported. That slowed down identification of bodies and enraged families waiting for news.

"These are the heroes. The miserable villains are the officers that lived," Edmundo Vivanco, uncle of one of the dead soldiers, 18-year-old Guillermo Foncea, said at the memorial.

But some soldiers who were in a group of 112 people trapped for four days in a mountain lodge before being rescued said they owed their lives to their superiors who decided to hold tight and ride out the storm.

"Thanks to my captain I'm alive," Victor Padilla told Channel 13 television.

The tragedy struck when more than 400 members of the regiment were hit by the blizzard. Hundreds were able to hike out or reach mountain shelters, but low temperatures and poor visibility hampered the search for dozens who fell.

- REUTERS