Pakistani rescuers saved one climber stranded on K2 yesterday and tried to help another after a catastrophic ice avalanche on the world’s second-highest peak killed 11 mountaineers.
Three South Koreans, two Nepalis, two Pakistanis, a Serbian, an Irishman, a Norwegian and a Frenchman were killed when a chunk of ice swept away ropes near the summit of the 8,611m peak on Friday, officials said.
Officials said that a Dutch climber was rescued by helicopter and a missing Italian had been located but was still stuck on the mountain, widely acknowledged by climbers to be more difficult to scale than Everest.
PHOTO: EPA
“At least 11 climbers have died. This is one of the worst incidents in the history of K2 climbing,” Sultan Alam, a Pakistani mountaineering guide, told reporters from the peak’s base camp, located at an altitude of 5,200m.
The exact number of climbers affected remains unclear but Alam said he was aware of 17 whose ropes were swept away, with 11 dead, two stuck on the mountain and three back at Base Camp.
“One Dutch was rescued by helicopter from K2 this morning while an Italian is still at an altitude of 7,200 meters,” Alam said as the roar of a helicopter could be heard in the background.
Another chopper went up to help the Italian but could not touch down and returned after a brief contact with the climber, Alam said.
“Our four high altitude porters left a while ago and it is expected that they will bring the Italian climber down this evening,” he said.
The avalanche happened when a pillar of ice broke away in a steep gully known as the Bottleneck about 396m below the summit and swept away fixed lines used by the mountaineers as they made their descent.
“The three mountaineers who survived are suffering from severe frostbite,” said Alam, who works for Adventure Tours Pakistan, which operated one of the expeditions caught up in the disaster.
“They are badly affected and it appears that at least one of them would have his hand and leg chopped off. This is what our high altitude doctors believe,” he said.
The incident was the worst since 1986 when 12 climbers died, said Nazir Sabir, a Pakistani mountaineer who scaled K2 in 1981.
The pyramid-shaped K2, which sits on the border between Pakistan and China in the Karakoram range, is considered by mountaineers to be by far the hardest of the 14 summits over 8,000m to scale.
Italian climbers Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli first scaled the mountain on July 31, 1954. Between that first ascent and last year, there were 284 successful ascents and 66 fatalities.
In the same period, Everest was summited 3,681 times, with 210 deaths.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
RSS