One person died and rescuers were fighting to find two others trapped in ice, after a glacier cave collapsed in Iceland, according to police.
A group of around 25 tourists were on an organized tour of the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in the south of the country when a wall of ice came crashing down inside a cave shortly before 3 p.m. on Sunday, according to officers in a social media statement.
One person was seriously injured and died at the scene, while two others are believed to be under the ice. Another person was injured and taken to hospital. Their condition is said to be stable.
A large number of rescuers worked throughout the afternoon and into the evening searching for the two missing people. However, the search was called off overnight due to dangerous conditions, but the police said efforts would resume on Monday morning.
"A large number of rescuers and responders have taken part in the operation," added police for the south of Iceland said in the statement.
Emergency services were unable to confirm the nationalities of tourists involved.
"The conditions for the search are difficult and it is now dark. It is not considered defensible due to the danger of the scene to continue the search at night. The search has therefore been postponed and will be resumed in the morning," added police.
Iceland's public broadcaster RUV reported that transporting equipment and personnel to the glacier had been challenging because of the rough landscape, with much of the ice-cutting done manually using chain saws.
"Although we think we know the location of the two missing, it is hard to say what amount of ice is between them and the rescuers," Jón Þór Víglundsson, a spokesperson for ICE-SAR, a volunteer search-and-rescue association was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "It is a difficult situation."
According to the local news outlet Visir, the group was on a guided ice cave tour, but most of them were outside the cave when it collapsed and were uninjured.
The ice cave is a well-known attraction for tourists. The Breidamerkurjokull glacier is part of Vatnajokull National Park, one of Europe's largest, spread across nearly 5,460sq miles.
The collapse likely was not connected to a volcanic eruption that occurred on Friday in southeast Iceland, roughly 300 kilometers (185 miles) away from the glacier.
Police are investigating.
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