Los Angeles, Chile ? Forty-one soldiers lost in a “snow tsunami” on the peaks of the Andes are “most probably dead,” the army’s top commander said Friday as survivors spoke tearfully of leaving behind comrades too exhausted to make it out of the blizzard.

Chilean Army Chief Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre, right, embraces a relative of an army soldier who was still missing in the middle of a snow storm Friday in the Andes mountains, near Los Angeles, Chile.

The soldiers – 40 young draftees and one officer – hadn’t been seen since Wednesday, when the worst storm the area has seen in decades slammed into a training march through the mountains.

The weather cleared enough Friday for 14 rescue patrols to search for the missing, but not for helicopters to join them.

Later Friday, Chile President Ricardo Lagos addressed the nation to announce that the patrols were returning with “13 bodies.” He said it wasn’t clear if they included four who had already been confirmed dead.

Chilean Army rescue soldiers open the way through the snow Thursday during the rescue operation to try to recover approximately 45 soldiers still missing from the middle of a snow storm in the Andes mountains near Los Angeles, Chile.

“We are all sad for those Chilean young men who died in the mountain,” Lagos said, and declared a three-day mourning period for them.

The army chief, Gen. Emilio Cheyre, joined the search, but emerged from the mountains late Friday to announce that the missing soldiers were probably dead. Much of the area was under 6 feet of snow.

“But we will continue to work hard to bring them, dead or alive, to us and to their families,” he said.

Cheyre removed from their posts the top three commanders of the regiment to which the soldiers belonged.

“The march should not have been started, never, under those weather conditions. It was the worst snowstorm in 30 years. And if it was started, it should have been suspended,” he said. “Those were officers specialized in mountaineering, and they should have known better.”

Dozens of soldiers initially reported missing have been located over the past two days, and many were recovering at their regiment’s headquarters in Los Angeles, 400 miles south of Santiago.

A captain who was found Friday, Claudio Gutierrez, refused to come down from the mountain and instead took up the search for the others, officials said. Cheyre ordered another 110 soldiers who made it to a shelter in the mountains to remain there until the weather clears enough to get them out safely.

Relatives of the missing huddled together in the gymnasium of Mountain Regiment 17, the base for the 485-soldier battalion that was caught in the storm. Many accused the army of keeping information from them, but officials insisted they knew as little as the families.