Reykjavik, Iceland — One person has died and two others are still missing, a day after an ice cave collapsed in southeastern Iceland while a tour group was in the area, police said Monday. A group of 25 people of “various nationalities” were on an organized tour to the Breidamerkurjökull glacier with a guide when the cave collapsed, police said in a statement.
According to police, four people were trapped under the ice and two of them have been found.
On Sunday, Sudurland police said the two people rescued were seriously injured, but added in a later statement early Monday that one of them was “pronounced dead at the scene.”
The other person was flown to a hospital by helicopter and is in a “stable” condition.
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Emergency services began searching for the two missing people on Sunday and continued the search on Monday.
“A large number of rescue workers and volunteers were involved in the operation,” police said, but added that conditions were “difficult.”
Authorities decided to temporarily halt the search on Sunday evening because it had become too dark and the search was no longer considered safe.
The glacier on which the accident occurred is located near the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, one of Iceland's most popular tourist destinations.
Iceland is a geologically unsettled country with numerous active volcanoes that regularly cause unrest with eruptions of toxic gases, ash and lava.
On Friday, Icelandic authorities announced that a second A crack had formed on the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula after lava erupted from the region for the sixth time since December. After weeks of warnings, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) announced that a new eruption had begun the previous evening following a series of earthquakes.
A video showed orange lava erupting from a long fissure that the IMO estimates to be more than three kilometers in diameter.
