ITALY: Several Dead In Ski Hotel After Avalanche

Several people have died after a ski hotel was buried by an avalanche in earthquake-hit central Italy, according to Italian media.

"There are many dead," Antonio Crocetta, the head of a group of Alpine police that was trying to reach the cut-off hotel, was quoted as saying on Thursday.

SkyTG24 television said some dead were found inside the Hotel Rigopiano in the town of Farindola on the Gran Sasso mountain in the province of Pescara in the Abruzzo region.

Media reports said there had been at least 20 guests and seven staff at the Hotel Rigopiano on the lower slopes of the Gran Sasso mountain when the first of four powerful quakes hit the region on Wednesday morning.

The rescuers at the hotel were reported to have a snow mobile capable of transporting up to eight people.

Ambulances were blocked by two metres of snow some nine kilometres away, according to the civil protection agency.

Antonio Di Marco, president of the province of Pescara, which includes the mountain village of Farindola, close to where the hotel is located, said two people had been found alive.

"We don't know yet how many people are unaccounted for or dead," he wrote on his Facebook page.

"What is certain is that the building took a direct hit from the avalanche, to the point that it was moved by 10 metres."

It was not clear if the two confirmed survivors had been at the hotel or had been out skiing when the avalanche occurred.

One of them was helicoptered to a hospital in Pescara suffering from hypothermia but was not in a life-threatening condition.

The region was hit by four seismic shocks measuring above five magnitude in the space of four hours on Wednesday, when at least one person was confirmed to have died.

The hotel is located around 90 kilometres from the epicentre of the earthquakes at Montereale, a small village south of Amatrice, the town devasted in an August earthquake in which nearly 300 people died.

Avalanche warnings were issued across the region which is dominated by Gran Sasso, a majestic 2,912 metres peak. The area has numerous small ski resorts popular with day-trippers from Rome and urban centres on Italy's east coast.

IRAN: Iran Seeks Tourism Dollars

Skiers sit on a ski lift over the Darbandsar ski resort, 60 kms northeast of Tehran. Long seen as a destination strewn with shortcomings, Iran is making a fresh pitch for tourists, with the recent lifting of economic sanctions providing an opportunity to cash in.

Long seen as a destination strewn with shortcomings, Iran is making a fresh pitch for tourists, with the recent lifting of economic sanctions providing an opportunity to cash in.

The tourism industry has been overlooked by successive governments in Tehran but the deal Iran struck with world powers over its nuclear programme last summer could change that.

Along with nine companions including Americans and Germans, China-based Frenchman Yannick Lequelenec said he aims to make "one unique journey" every year. For 2016, he chose Iran.

"My family told me I was crazy, but people have been welcoming and very friendly," he said in Tehran of his one-week trip taken over the Chinese New Year holidays.

Tourists, and the healthy revenues they could generate, are among the huge economic changes stemming from the nuclear deal.

Ski resorts, UNESCO-listed world heritage sites and deserts combine with cities steeped in Middle Eastern grandeur and tradition.

A tourism push was launched after President Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013, ending the hardline era of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during which Iran's international isolation deepened.

Entry procedures have been simplified, meaning visitors from only 11 countries are not eligible for a visa on arrival.

The United States, Britain, Canada and France top the exclusion list but some people will not be put off by the restrictions.

"The first thing we did was to go skiing in Tochal," said Rachel Punter, a 41-year-old British teacher based in Shanghai who was among Lequelenec's group.

The ski resort is one of several close to the capital. That outing was followed by trips to Isfahan, Shiraz and Yazd, cities considered much more beautiful and relaxed than Tehran.

Among the popular sites in Isfahan is Imam Square, second in size only to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but with water fountains and impressive architecture the Iranian site is much more attractive.

For Rouhani, tourism offers a way to offset falling oil prices that have slashed government income. The goal is 20 million tourists annually by 2025 which would provide $30 billion a year, a fivefold increase in current revenues from foreign visitors.

It comes as tourists shun many parts of the Middle East because of war and a recent wave of jihadist attacks in countries including Egypt and Tunisia.

International credit and debit cards still do not work in Iran, but arriving with foreign currency and converting it into a large bundle of local rial notes does not seem a handicap.

There have been 4.16 million visitors in the first nine months of the Iranian year, which started in March 2015, up five percent from a year earlier, according to the tourism ministry.

Two thirds of them come from neighbouring countries, such as Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Afghanistan or Pakistan, predominantly religious pilgrims visiting the holy Shiite cities of Mashhad, northeast of Tehran, and Qom, south of the capital.

Western tourists currently number only five percent but the trend is upward, according to Ebrahim Pourfaraj, head of Pasargad Tour Agency and president of the Association of Iranian Tour Operators.

"For tourists, the sense of security and peace is very important. The nuclear deal and the trips of President Hassan Rouhani to Italy and France have reinforced this phenomenon," he said.