Six people have been killed in two separate incidents after frozen waterfalls they were climbing collapsed in the Italian and French Alps.

Four died in the first incident close to Gressony-Saint-Jean in the northern Italian Alps, near Switzerland.

A fifth climber, a woman according to Italian media, was injured when the large slab of ice cracked and fell away from the mountainside.

She survived because she had reached a ledge above the frozen Bonne Annee waterfall before a section of it fell away.

The climbers who died are thought to have fallen around 100m.


A witness who had been climbing a nearby frozen waterfall said: "We were climbing when we heard a loud roar. Shortly after we heard the helicopter."

In the French Alps, two men were killed near the town of La Grave when an ice sheet broke off and crashed down on them.

RAI television said the four dead in the first incident were all Italians, and they were probably experienced as it is a difficult climb.

On Tuesday at least four people were killed in an avalanche at the French ski resort Tignes.

Around nine people were hit by the avalanche while skiing off-piste.