The disaster struck in Kohistan district, which borders Pakistan's mountainous Northern Areas and is blanketed in snow for most of the harsh winter, hampering efforts to reach the stricken area.

"We have recovered 19 dead bodies. There are more people buried under the snow glacier, there is no chance of their survival," Mohammad Ilyas, the district police chief in Kohistan, told AFP by telephone.

"According to a fresh report I have, there were 37 people buried under the glacier. It was a huge glacier and there is no chance that anybody will survive. If somebody is buried under such a huge glacier, he cannot survive."

Police official Mohammad Sadiq told AFP that rescue teams had recovered 20 dead bodies from the Kohistan avalanche about 220 kilometres (138 miles) north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

"The avalanche hit Kundian village... We fear that some women and children were also trapped," he said, adding that four houses were completely buried.

Remote Kundian village is cut off with no phone or communication links.

"There is about five to seven feet of snow around the village and in the mountains -- rescue workers are facing a lot of problems," said Shams Ur Rehman, a police official in the region.

"One has to travel 50 kilometres on foot to reach this village."

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani issued a statement expressing "grief and sorrow over the loss of precious lives and destruction of property".

Seven people were also killed in a separate avalanche Monday in the northern district of Chitral, with officials saying the remote location prevented them reaching the area earlier.

A huge mass of snow slammed into a road about 150 kilometres west of Kohistan, burying local villagers returning after working at a construction project in the area, local police officer Sahab Nabi said.

"We have recovered four bodies and three are still buried under the avalanche," he told AFP.

Witnesses said people were forced to use spades and their hands to try and rescue the victims as no heavy machinery was able to reach the area.

Frequent avalanches and landslides block roads and leave communities isolated in the mountains of Pakistan, neighbouring Afghanistan and in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory divided between rivals India and Pakistan.

Last week in Afghanistan, 170 people were killed when massive avalanches of snow crashed onto a crowded road on a treacherous mountain pass in the Hindu Kush, in one of the war-torn country's worst such natural disasters.

This month, avalanches killed 21 Indian soldiers in Kashmir.

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