DHAKA A 30-year-old journalist became the first Bangladeshi to conquer Mount Everest when he reached the summit of the worlds highest peak on Sunday, an official said.

Nasrin Jahan, deputy mission chief of Bangladeshs embassy in Nepal, told AFP Monday that Musa Ibrahim, who works as a sub-editor for the Daily Star, was now on his way down from the peak.

“He was the first in a team of 18 mountaineers who reached the top on Sunday. Everest base camp informed it to his tour operator. We also got confirmation from the Tibet mountaineering association,” Jahan said.

“He used the Tibetan side to scale Mount Everest,” she said by phone from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu.

Thousands of people have reached the summit since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to conquer the 8,848-metre (29,028-foot) mountain in 1953.

On Saturday at least 50 mountaineers scaled the summit including 13-year-old American Jordan Romero, who became the youngest person to conquer the peak, and record-breaking Apa Sherpa, 50, known as “super Sherpa”.

The summit season on Everest begins in late April and May when a small window between spring and the summer monsoon offers the best conditions for making the ascent.