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Eight hikers remain missing from Malaysia's Mt. Kinabalu
02:05 - Source: CNN

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Mountain guides are being lauded as heroes for trying to get people off a trapped mountain

Primary school students from Singapore are among the dead and survivors

CNN  — 

Two days after a deadly earthquake in Malaysia launched perilous rock slides toward mountain hikers, more devastation and more hope emerged.

Authorities recovered several more bodies from the slopes of Mount Kinabalu, bringing the death toll from Friday’s quake to at least 16, a Malaysian tourism minister said Sunday.

Two people remain missing on the mountain, minister Masidi Manjun said. But one person who was thought to be missing has been found safe.

While hundreds of workers continue searching for the missing, two countries grieve.

Sunday’s Malaysian Kaamatan celebration – a harvest festival – in Ranau has been canceled “as (a) mark of respect to those who perished,” Manjun said. He also tweeted that Monday will be a day of mourning in the state of Sabah.

And Singapore is mourning the loss of several students and at least one teacher from a primary school who were on a trip to Mount Kinabalu when the magnitude-6.0 quake struck.

Several students killed

They had gone to Kinabalu, one of Southeast Asia’s tallest peaks, for adventure. They left with heartbreak – knowing some of their classmates and teachers weren’t coming home with them.

“The students (are) shaken but are safe,” Singapore’s Minister of Education Heng Swee Keat said after a “very emotional” airport meeting Saturday with the surviving students and teachers.

“The teachers are also affected but stayed resilient.”

Authorities have named some of the 16 people killed, including five students from Tanjong Katong Primary School:

• Ameer Ryyan bin Mohd Adeed Sanjay

• Emilie Giovanna Ramu

• Matahom Karyl Mitzi Higuit

• Rachel Ho Yann Shiuan

• Sonia Jhala

Teacher Loo Jian Liang Terrence Sebastian also died, Singapore’s Ministry of Education said. So did Muhammad Daanish bin Amran, a Singaporean guide who was with the students, as well as mountain guide Robbi Sappingi.

Many made it out alive – including 167 climbers helped to safety by mountain guides, Malaysia’s fire and rescue department said.

Mountain guides became ‘heroes’

Nurul Hani Ideris, 29, was on the mountain peak with a group of climbers and tour guides when the quake struck, blocking off trails and stranding them.

“All the paths vanished,” she told CNN.

Shivering in near-freezing temperatures, they waited all day for a helicopter rescue that never came. But then a team of 75 additional guides from the park arrived, she said.

They embarked on a grueling 10-hour hike through debris that lasted into the middle of the night, sharing what little food and water they had and passing by what appeared to be bodies.

Climbers were stranded on the peak of Mount Kinabalu after the earthquake hit.

A helicopter spotted them and threw two boxes of supplies, but the boxes fell off a gorge.

“We were exhausted, starving at the same time,” she said. “It was very difficult.”

Still, the mountain guides “seemed to know every single part of the place” and managed to carve a route through the devastated landscape, cutting branches and tying ropes to create a new path.

It was nearly 2 a.m. Saturday when they reached Kundasang, a town near the mountain’s southern base.

Only as they neared the base did they see the fire brigade and later the army.

“No one came to save us,” she said. If it hadn’t been for the mountain guides, “We would be freezing to death.”

Lynn Siang, a tour agency spokeswoman, described the mountain guides as “heroes.”

“The main rescue work was done by the mountain guides,” she told CNN. “On the path that was blocked by fallen rocks, the mountain guides had to tie a rope. When climbers crossed the ropes, they had to step on the shoulders of the guides – the guides used their body as a cushion.”

The UNESCO-listed Mount Kinabalu National Park – including the namesake peak, which rises to 4,095 meters (13,435 feet) above sea level – is a geographic jewel in Malaysian Borneo. It’s so popular that visitors have to book two to three months in advance to secure one of 196 daily allocated hiking permits.

CNN’s Greg Botelho and Brian Walker contributed to this report.