ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities believe that two mountaineers, a Spaniard and an Argentinian, missing for over a week in Pakistan’s northern Himalayan mountains perished in an avalanche, officials said on Sunday.
Alberto Zerain Berasategi from Spain and Mariano Galvan from Argentina were last heard from on 23 June while at the 6,100 meter base of Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth-highest mountain, said Karrar Haidri, spokesman for the Alpine Club of Pakistan.
“The spot they were believed to be in has been struck by a large avalanche and the helicopter rescue officials have said (survival) appears unlikely,” Haidari said.
Haidari confirmed that search and rescue operations were called off on Saturday.
Both men were experienced climbers with Zerain being part of an elite club to have scaled the world’s two tallest mountains, Everest and K2.
Galvan climbed Everest in 2012 but an attempt to climb K2 alone and without supplemental oxygen ended at 7,300 meters.
Muhammmad Iqbal, owner of Summit Karakorum, the tour company that arranged the climbing expedition, said the last helicopter search found no trace of the men, adding that another climbing team started its ascent of 8,126 meter Nanga Parbat on Sunday.
Pakistan rivals Nepal for the number of peaks over 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) and is home to the world’s second-tallest mountain, K2, as well as three others which are among the world’s 14 summits higher than 8,000 meters.
Nanga Parbat was the scene of an attack in 2013, when gunmen dressed as police officers shot 10 foreign mountaineers and a local guide at the 4,200-meter base camp.
The killings were claimed by both the Pakistani Taliban and a smaller group of militants.
Since that attack, the number of expeditions has dwindled, wrecking communities dependent on climbing tourism for income and depriving Pakistan’s economy of much-needed dollars.
Two mountaineers missing in Pakistani Himalayas feared dead
Two mountaineers missing in Pakistani Himalayas feared dead
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
