A German couple and their two children driving in the Tyrol Alpine region were killed yesterday, crushed in an avalanche that buried their car under metres of snow, police said.
"The family were crushed under the mass of snow inside their vehicle," Tyrol police spokesman Mr Gottlieb Hunter said. The accident happened two years to the day after avalanches in the nearby village of Galtuer killed 38 people.
The driver of another car managed to claw himself out of the snow, while rescuers dug out another three people.
Police said the four victims were a 43-year-old man, his wife (41) their 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter.
Two avalanches in close succession buried several vehicles on a 300-metre stretch of road near the village of Obergurgl, 100 km south-west of Innsbruck, the regional capital, police said.
An officer said several metres of snow had fallen from the mountain side on to the road from Obergurgl to Untergurgl, which lies at an altitude of 1,800 metres.
Three helicopters, trucks, mechanical diggers and hundreds of rescue workers were on site trying to dig up any other possible survivors, police said.
"It's impossible to dig by hand," a police spokesman said, explaining that no anti-avalanche barriers had been constructed on the slope because of the difficult shape of the mountainside.
A metre of snow had fallen during the night at Obergurgl.
Access to Tyrol ski resorts at Lech, Zuers, and Galtuer was temporarily sealed off early yesterday because of the increased risk of further avalanches following the heavy snowfall.
Avalanches were being set off deliberately as a preventive measure, while authorities warned that the risk of avalanche was still very high in the southern region of Carinthia, where 30 cm of fresh snow had fallen.
Sheet ice and snow yesterday caused 15 trucks and 40 cars to skid and crash into one another on a stretch of the A2 motorway in south-eastern Austria, killing one person and injuring at least a further 10, the motoring group, ARBOe, said in a statement.
Sections of the A1 motorway linking Austria to Germany via Salzburg were completely shut during the afternoon.
On the A10 motorway from Salzburg to Italy a 10 km traffic jam had built up in front of the Tauerntunnel beneath the Alps.