July 18, 2008	Friday	Rajab 14, 1429

ROME, July 17: A renowned Italian mountain climber is missing and believed dead after falling into a crevasse on one of the world’s deadliest peaks in the western Himalayas, rescuers said on Thursday.

Karl Unterkircher, 37, was climbing with two others on Nanga Parbat when a ridge of snow gave way and he plunged into a ravine.

In 2004, the expert Alpine guide clocked a world record for the fastest ascent, in 63 days, of Mount Everest and K2 without oxygen. Two years later, he was the first to conquer the 6,240-metre peak of Mount Genyen in China.

“The tragedy is now a sad reality,” Herbert Mussner, Unterkircher’s manager, wrote on the climber’s website. “There is no more hope.”

A rescue party was expected to leave for Pakistan, but its main goal was to help the two survivors of the expedition make their way down the mountain, said Everest-K2-CNR, an Italy-based research group that was organising the effort.

“There is nothing to do. In that area it will be impossible to even recover (a) body,” said Francesca Steffanoni, a spokeswoman for the group.—AP