Three students who went missing during a climbing trip in Tibet are presumed dead, said an official with the Tibetan Mountaineering Association Wednesday.

One of the students is Lu Zhen, a second-year student at Peking University.

Zhang Mingxing, the mountaineering official, declined to name the other two students.

The dead bodies of two other students were found on August 9 and another association source said one of the bodies had been identified as Lin Liqing, captain of the expedition.

The students were climbing the 8,012-metre-high Mount Shisha Pagma.

However, Lin, Lu and three other students were swept by an avalanche while climbing the western face of the world's 14th-highest peak on August 7.

Lu and Lin were two of the 15 members -- aged between 18 and 24 -- of the Peking University Mountaineering Association, a leading amateur climbing group in China founded 13 years ago.

They left Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, on July 20 and set up a base camp on Mount Shisha Pagma on July 24 at a spot 5,400 meters above sea level. The mountain is part of the Qomolangma range, according to Zhang.

The university association Wednesday confirmed that the three missing students had little chance of survival, judging from pictures of the massive avalanche.

The student group said it has contacted the parents of the ill-fated climbers.

The climbers had originally planned to conquer the 7,292-metre western face of Mount Shisha Pagma before climbing to the main peak of the mountain next year, it said.

It was not immediately clear whether or not the other student climbers had decided to continue their climb.

Two of the student climbers, who took the avalanche pictures to Lhasa on Monday to report to the Tibetan association, joined seven skilled Tibetan climbers on Tuesday afternoon to form a rescue team, according to Zhang.

They were expected to reach the base camp Wednesday evening, he said in a telephone interview.

If things go well, the task force will get to the accident site -- around 6,800 meters above sea level -- tomorrow, Zhang said.

The China Mountaineering Association Wednesday expressed its "deep sorrow and distress'' over the tragedy, which it said had been caused by "unpredictable and irresistible natural factors.''

The association appealed to climbers and others engaged in outdoor sports to always put safety first.

Both the Tibetan association's Zhang and Yu Liangpu, secretary-general of the Beijing association, said they had told the student climbers that summer is by no means the best time to climb Mount Shisha Pagma.

But the students pressed on.

Shisha Pagma means "rigorous climate'' in Tibetan and it has a lot of rainfall and snow in summer, Zhang said.

Usually, autumn and spring are the best seasons to climb the mountain, he said.

In 1999, United States mountaineer Alex Lowe and David Bridges, a high-altitude cameraman also from the United States, were killed in an avalanche while on a skiing expedition on the mountain.

(China Daily August 15, 2002)