ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani climber was killed and Italian and Pakistani members of the same expedition were injured after being caught in an avalanche on a mountain in remote northern Pakistan, a mountaineering group said Tuesday.
Pakistan’s Alpine Club said the incident took place Monday when four Italian and three Pakistani mountaineers were descending a peak in the Ishkoman Valley. Pakistan’s military was dispatching a helicopter to rescue the climbers, who have multiple injuries, it said.
The four Italian climbers involved are expedition leader Tarcisio Bellò, Luca Morellato, David Bergamin and Tino Toldo.
Italian Ambassador Stefano Pontecorvo confirmed Monday’s incident happened in the northern district of Ghizar, but gave no further details. The Alpine Club statement said the details involving the incident were still sketchy.
In a separate incident Monday, two Chinese mountaineers have been reported missing in another area in northern Pakistan, said Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Alpine Club.
He said Pakistani authorities were trying to dispatch a helicopter to trace and rescue them.
Haidri said he was confident that the body of the Pakistani mountaineer and injured Italian and Pakistani mountaineers would be brought to the base camp by helicopter and that all arrangements were in place to send them to a nearby hospital.
“I am sure the army helicopter will fly today despite harsh weather,” he told The Associated Press.
Earlier, a Pakistani tour operator who arranged the expedition, Ashraf Aman, said volunteers from the area were trying to reach the exact area where the stranded mountaineers were waiting for the help.
Mountaineers from across the world travel to Pakistan every year to try scaling its high northern mountain ranges. Harsh weather and conditions often prove a test for the most experienced of climbers.
Earlier this year, two European climbers — Italian Daniele Nardi and Briton Tom Ballard — were killed during bad winter weather on Nanga Parbat, which is the world’s ninth-tallest mountain at 8,126 meters (26,660 feet).
Nardi, from near Rome, had attempted to scale Nanga Parbat in winter several times. Ballard’s disappearance hit his homeland particularly hard as he is the son of Alison Hargreaves, the first woman to scale Mount Everest alone.
She died at age 33 descending the summit of K2.
Pakistani climber killed, Italians injured by avalanche
Pakistani climber killed, Italians injured by avalanche
- Military was dispatching a helicopter to rescue the climbers
- Mountaineers were descending a peak in the Ishkoman Valley
Saudi charity KSrelief distributes 4,000 winter kits in northwest Pakistan
- The charity will distribute around 800 kits each in five districts, containing two quilts and winter clothing
- The program is part of a broader winterization initiative to help communities affected by harsh weather
ISLAMABAD: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) on Friday said it had started distributing 4,000 winter kits in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to help communities affected by harsh weather.
The program is part of KSrelief’s larger winterization initiative that was launched at the Saudi embassy in Islamabad earlier in January. Under the broader initiative, 22,000 winter kits will be distributed among more than 154,000 Pakistanis across the country.
Each winter kit includes two polyester quilts, warm shawls and winter clothing. Around 800 kits will be distributed in each of the Chitral, Upper Dir, Upper Kohistan, Mansehra and Kurram districts.
"The initiative targets communities severely impacted by harsh winter conditions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, as well as selected areas of Punjab and Sindh experiencing extremely low temperatures," KSrelief said in a statement.
The project is being carried out in close collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority, provincial disaster management authorities, the Relief, Rehabilitation and Settlement Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Hayat Foundation.
The statement said the initiative reaffirms KSrelief's continued commitment to alleviating winter-related hardships and improving the living conditions of vulnerable populations across Pakistan.
The Saudi charity has launched numerous projects across Pakistan in food security, health, education and disaster response in recent years, deepening the bonds of friendship and brotherhood between the two countries.
