Search teams found four bodies near the site of an avalanche in northern Pakistan that left 10 people missing from a climbing expedition led by British-Nepalese mountaineer Nirmal Purja, police said yesterday.A spokesperson for police in the mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region said that search-and-rescue teams had reached the location the avalanche had struck on Thursday, cutting off contact with the international expedition that had been in the area.“Preliminary reports indicate that four (04) bodies have so far been recovered,” Gilgit-Baltistan region’s police spokesperson said in a statement on Facebook, adding that the condition of the remaining climbers was still being verified.
A photo released by the Alpine Club of Pakistan yesterday shows members of a mountaineers rescue team posing with the club’s honorary general secretary, Ayaz Ahmed Shigri, center, before departing from an airbase on a search operation for climbers missing after an avalanche on Broad Peak in Skardu in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region.
The Alpine Club of Pakistan said the expedition comprised 10 people — including five Nepalese, a Pakistani, an Omani, an American, and a climber from China. Police did not mention a US citizen and said two British nationals — a man and a woman — were in the missing team.
