The bodies of 11 climbers have been recovered from Malaysia's biggest earthquake rocking Mount Kinabalu, increasing the total bodies found sofar to 13, said Malaysian authority on June 6.

A local police man said among the dead victims there were teachers and students from a primary school in Singapore.

Singapore’s Education Ministry said on late June 6 that only one schoolgirl from Singapore had been identified as 12-year-old Peony Wee Ying Ping. Currently, six students and two teachers remain unaccounted for. The group comprised of 28 students and 8 teachers.

The same day, 137 climbers who had been stranded on the mountain for 18 hours safely returned to Kinabalu Park’s headquarters. Those included nationals from Malaysia, Singapore, the US, the Philippines, the UK, Thailand, Turkey, China and Japan.

Mount Kinabalu, which rises to 4,095 metres above the sea level, is a favourite tourist destination in Malaysia’s Sabah State. It draws about 20,000 visitors each year.

Trekking activities will be suspended for at least three weeks to repair roads, hostels and other facilities which were damaged by the earthquake.

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake rocked parts of the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island on early June 5, which is said to be one of the strongest quakes to have hit the country for decades. Major earthquakes are rare in Malaysia, which lies just outside the Ring of Fire, the belt of seismic activity running around the Pacific basin.-VNA