A huge glacier has broken off and plunged into a lake in Peru sparking a 23-metre high tsunami wave that destroyed a nearby town.According to the Indeci civil defence institute, 50 homes have been destroyed.
A water processing plant serving 60,000 local residents was also devastated when the wave struck on Sunday.
Initially, six people were reported missing, feared dead under the debris - but local governor Cesar Alvarez has said five of those have been found alive.
Authorities evacuated mountain valleys, fearing more ice breakages after the tsunami - which are most commonly caused by earthquakes.
Blaming climate change, Mr Alvarez said: "Because of global warming the glaciers are going to detach and fall on these overflowing lakes. This is what happened."
Investigators have said the ice block from the Hualcan glacier measured 500m by 200m.
Patricio Vaderrama, a Peruvian glacier expert, said: "The tsunami wave breached the lake's levees, which are 23m high - meaning the wave was 23m high."
Peru is home to 70 per cent of the world's tropical icefields.
A 2009 World Bank report warned Andean glaciers and the region's permanently snow-covered peaks could disappear in 20 years if no measures are taken to tackle climate change.
According to the report, in the last 35 years Peru's glaciers have shrunk by 22 per cent.
In 1970, an earthquake triggered an avalanche of ice, rock and mud on the mountain of Huascaran that buried the town of Yungay, killing more than 20,000 people.
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