GILGIT: Two members of a 14-strong expedition has gone missing while attempting to climb the 8,126-metre Nanga Parbat, notoriously known as Killer Mountain.

Albereto Zerain Berasatei from Spain and Mariano Galacan from Argentina set out with 12 other members of the team on May 18 to climb the world’s ninth-highest mountain.

According to police, 12 members of the team returned to their base camp on Monday because of bad weather conditions, but two climbers who were on the high camp had not been in contact for the past three days.

The missing climbers are feared to have been hit by an avalanche.

The missing climbers are feared to have been hit by an avalanche

Mohammad Iqbal, the organiser of the expedition, told Dawn that a rescue operation to trace the missing climbers was under way.

Usually, the climbers need 45 days to reach the peak of the mountain.

Agencies add: A ground team began searching for the two missing tourists but helicopters could not join the search effort due to poor weather, said Karrar Haidari, spokesman for the Alpine Club of Pakistan.

“In such weather conditions and without adequate food supply, survival appears unlikely, but there was the case of Tomaz Humar a few years ago,” Haidari said, adding that rescue officials were doing everything possible to find the men.

Slovenian mountaineer Humar was trapped on Nanga Parbat for six days in 2005 before army helicopters found him trapped under a ledge at a height of nearly 6,000 metres.

In 2013, gunmen dressed as police officers shot 10 foreign mountaineers and a local guide at Nanga Parbat’s 4,200-metre base camp.

The attack, later claimed by the Taliban, resulted in a major decrease in climbing expeditions, wrecking communities dependent on climbing tourism for income and depriving the country’s economy of much-needed dollars.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2017