According to an official statement, the deceased were part of a group of eight reported missing on Saturday on the highway connecting the Altay and Burqin counties.

The workers were traveling from their work site to the nearest town, after interrupting work on the construction site, due to the extreme cold.

Their vehicle got stuck between snow banks more than a meter deep, which is why they decided to walk and ended up getting lost.

Rescue teams found the bodies of the seven workers on Sunday and brought the eighth one alive to a hospital, where he remains in a stable condition.

The local government opened an investigation into the case.

Since last November 20th, Altay and other places in Xinjiang have suffered the worst snowfall and storms in the last decade, which led to decreeing an emergency response to a number of contingencies.

In addition, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang are also experiencing extreme weather, and the National Meteorological Center decreed high alert on Tuesday because of a cold front that will devastate more than half of the country until Wednesday.

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