Five cross-country skiers who went missing during a ski tour in Switzerland were found dead, while a search was still on for the sixth skier, police said in a statement on Monday.

The skiers, five of them members of the same family, went missing around Tete Blanche mountain on Saturday on the Zermatt-Arolla path, near the Matterhorn mountain that straddles the border between Switzerland and Italy.

The bodies were discovered Sunday in Tete Blanche sector, police said.

The skiers were between the ages of 21 and 58, according to an earlier police statement. Five belonged to one family from the Valais canton, while a sixth person is from the canton of Fribourg.

Police did not reveal the identity of those who were found dead.

Zermatt is a popular mountain resort renowned for skiing and attracts tourists from around the world.

Earlier, a rescue operation began a day earlier to find the six Swiss ski hikers who went missing on March 9 in the Swiss Alps must, AFP quoted police as saying.

The six people are aged 21 to 58 and five of them are members of the same family.

They are “actively sought on the Zermatt-Arolla hiking route,” which is in the canton of Valais (southwest), the police said in a news release.

The group left Zermatt on Saturday with the aim of reaching Arolla the same day.

Saturday around 4:00pm, a member of the family who came to pick up the group in Arolla contacted the cantonal police and the cantonal Valais emergency organization (OCVS), worried about not seeing their loved ones arrive.

A little over an hour later, the hikers were located in the Col de Tete Blanche area, at approximately 3,500 meters above sea level, because a member of the group managed to contact emergency services.

As soon as the alert was received, all emergency resources were mobilized on both sides of the route and numerous technical resources were deployed to find the hikers, the police said.

But the weather conditions, which were very bad over the weekend, made the emergency response very difficult.

The storm which raged in the south of the Swiss Alps as well as the danger of avalanches prevented helicopters and rescue columns from being able to approach the area.

An attempt to approach by land from Zermatt was undertaken during the night from Saturday to Sunday by “5 experienced rescuers” from the OCVS but they had to give up more than 3,000 meters of altitude due to the very bad weather conditions and the risks involved.