Nepal Seeks Help Identifying Bodies Found on Mount Everest

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepalese officials on Friday asked for help in identifying four bodies that were recovered from Mount Everest this climbing season, one of the deadliest yet.

Mira Acharya, the director of Nepal’s department of tourism, said her office was preparing to review autopsy reports for the climbers, who were brought down from the world’s highest mountain as part of a spring trash cleanup.

Officials plan to work with embassies in Kathmandu, the capital, to get in contact with relatives of the deceased climbers. “If family members do not approach us about the bodies, we will have to cremate them,” Ms. Acharya said.

The corpses were recovered from different parts of the mountain, including near the summit, and identifying them is likely to be challenging.

Kul Bahadur Gurung, the general secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, which was involved in retrieving the bodies, said some of them were unrecognizable.

“Avalanches broke their bodies,” he said, adding that they were all believed to be foreigners and that it was unclear how long they had been on the mountain.