VLADIVOSTOK, August 3. /TASS/. A group of five tourists has gone missing in the taiga in the southeast of Russia’s Primorsky Region. Russian Emergencies Ministry specialists began searching for them, the press service of the ministry’s regional department reported on Thursday.
"The Emergencies Ministry department in the Primorsky Region received a request from police to assist in the search for a group of five tourists who left for the village of Chistovodnoye in the Lazovsky Municipal District (southeast of the Primorsky Region, about 300 kilometers away from Vladivostok - TASS). "The group failed to show up by the date of its arrival to its final destination point (August 1)," the press service said.
It noted that rescuers from the Nakhodka search and rescue unit began combing the area searching for the missing tourists. The heads of the local administrations along the group’s supposed route were asked to send people to join the operation.
The area where the group went missing is a taiga-covered mountainous terrain containing very few inhabited communities.