By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Five Russian climbers who have been missing on Nepal’s Mount Dhaulagiri since the weekend were found dead on the world’s seventh tallest mountain, their hiking company said on Tuesday.
There had been no contact with the climbers, scaling the 8,167-m (26,795-ft) peak without Sherpa guides, since Sunday night, when they reached a height of 7,700 m (25,262 ft).
A search and rescue helicopter saw the bodies of all five at an altitude of about 7,600 m (24,934 ft) on the mountain in western Nepal, said Pemba Jangbu Sherpa, a senior official of the company providing logistics support to the Russian team.
Further details were not immediately available.
“They might have been tied to the same rope,” said Pemba, who goes by his first name. “One of them could have slipped on the slope and all five fell together.”
Another member of the team, who was exhausted and unable to walk, has been evacuated and is being treated at a hospital in Kathmandu, the capital, added Pemba, whose company is named ‘I Am Trekking and Expedition’.
Mountain climbing in a key tourism activity in Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, providing crucial employment and income.
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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