The search for a 64-year-old man was suspended Thursday due to unsafe conditions after a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier crashed down a Swiss mountainside the day before.

The landslide sent plumes of dust skyward and coated with mud nearly all of an Alpine village that authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution. State Councilor Stéphane Ganzer told Radio Télévision Suisse that 90% of the village was destroyed.

"An unbelievable amount of material thundered down into the valley," the Reuters news agency quotes Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for local authorities as saying.

"We've lost our village," Blatten Mayor Matthias Bellwald told a press conference, according to Reuters. "The village is under rubble. We will rebuild."

The Cantonal Police of Valais said th

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