Four climbers from Italy and South Korea were found dead on the Alps' highest peak of Mont Blanc on Tuesday after they had been missing for three days in bad weather, the local French prefecture said.

The mountaineers had "died of exhaustion," the Haute-Savoie prefecture told AFP, adding that rescuers who finally reached the site found the two Koreans first, close by the two Italians.

A helicopter from the PGHM mountain police based in Annecy was able to land at around 1:30 pm and found the bodies between 100 and 200 meters (330-660 feet) from the summit.

"The bodies have been brought down" from the mountain and "the families informed," the PGHM's Chamonix branch said.

A group of Italian mountain rescuers had reached the summit on foot after setting off in the morning but did not spot the bodies, the police added.

Police were alerted late on Saturday about "three missing climbing parties near the summit of Mont Blanc in very poor weather conditions."

The parties had set off "without guides," the prefecture said.

An intensive rescue effort retrieved two Koreans, who were alive, at 4,100 meters (13,450 feet) on Sunday morning.

But the weather later worsened, leaving rescuers unable to keep up the search for those still out on the mountain in subsequent days.

As late as Tuesday morning, a search helicopter had turned back from Mont Blanc as it could not find a way through clouds.

One senior PHGM commander told regional daily Le Dauphine Libere that they had briefly reached the Italians by phone and gleaned their location 4,600 meters up on Mont Blanc's north face, but that the connection had cut out.

At 4,809 meters, Mont Blanc is western Europe's highest peak and very popular with climbers from all over the world. However, scaling the mountain is risky.

In 2022, a French mayor said conditions on Mont Blanc were so dangerous that climbers should pay a €15,000 deposit to cover rescue and possible funeral costs, the BBC reported. At the time, Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of Saint-Gervais, criticized "pseudo climbers" who insisted on attempting the climb "with death in their backpacks."

"I wanted to make people react, to understand that today it's very dangerous, almost suicidal to go up," he told the BBC.

Melting glaciers in the Mont Blanc range have previously revealed the bodies of hikers dating back decades.

In 2019, "CBS Mornings" got a closer look at the glaciers on Mont Blanc. There are about 30 glaciers on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, all of which are melting – and in the last 50 years, Italian glaciers have lost about 40% of their mass.