Chunks of ice up to 100 metres (300 feet) thick entombed the area around the village of Karmadon in North Ossetia, a region on the northern edge of Russia's border with Georgia.

"The speed of the stream (of ice, mud and boulders) was huge. There's no chance that any one in the area at the time survived," said Mikhail Razanov, deputy head of the local Emergencies Ministry crisis unit told Interfax news agency.

Local officials said 24 bodies had so far been pulled from the debris, although the Emergencies Ministry in Moscow only confirmed the recovery of six bodies.

Regional leader Alexander Dzasokhov told ORT television that the 17 Karmadon residents thought to have been in the village at the time of the calamity were "almost certainly dead".

Search and rescue teams also checked tourist camps in the zone said officials, adding that any hikers or mountain climbers in the area at the time were unlikely to have survived.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu warned that meltwaters posed a new threat, noting the last kilometre (0.6 miles) of the ice had an estimated volume of 10-11 million cubic metres (350-388 million cu ft).

"If there is a sharp thaw, then we have to take steps to evacuate people from the region who could be in the disaster zone," Russian news agencies quoted him as saying.

CULT FIGURE MISSING

Among the missing was 30-year-old Russian screen idol Sergei Bodrov Jr, a cult figure best known for his action movies.

Nine of his 58-member crew filming in the area were found alive, Interfax quoted rescue teams as saying, although the fate of the star remained unknown.

Television pictures showed mechanical diggers working their way through a treacherous tangle of dark mud, boulders, trees and ice, dwarfed by the remains of the glacier. Villagers reported lumps of ice as big as trucks up to 30 kms (18 miles) from Karmadon.

Dzasokhov said that the various strands of the icy mass which had devastated his region now stretched over 33 km (20 miles). Its sheer scale was hampering a rescue effort that television said now involved 1,000 people.

"The biggest difficulty is the enormous chunk and mass of ice, which was formed after the glacier broke away," the veteran North Ossetian leader said.

"In some places this piece of ice reaches 50 metres (165 feet) high, and under such conditions, of course, even the most experienced rescuers face problems, because they need to find other ways of getting to the bottom of this mass of ice."

Specialists were arriving from Moscow to inspect the remainder of the glacier and ascertain whether further ice falls can be expected, he said. Itar-Tass news agency quoted officials as saying the main part of the glacier still in the mountains contained an estimated 330 million cubic metres (11.65 billion cu ft) of water. (Additional reporting by Natalya Borisova in Moscow).