Nanga Parbat terrorist attack: alpinists abandon Base Camp

After yesterday's terrorist attack, the latest news concerning the massacre at Nanga Parbat's Diamir base camp is that almost all expeditions have left or are in the process of leaving the mountain.

Altitudepakistan.blogspot.it states that Pawel Michalski and Simone La Terra are already in Islamabad, while Turkish mountaineer Tunc Findik, Mehdi Gholipour and their Nepali climbing partners, were taken to Gilgit yesterday and should make their way to Islamabad today.

The Polish expedition Nanga Parbat 2013 Experience is said to be returning, too, just like the survivors of the Ukrainian expedition and members of the international expedition led by Alexandra Dzik, expected to reach Gilgit by helicopter later today.

At present it is not yet clear if the Pakistani alpinists Karim Hayyat, Naseer Uddin and Sher Khan who were at the Diamir Advanced Base Camp will proceed with their ascent. On the mountain's other side, on the Rupal Face, the Romanian team is continuing its ascent; yesterday the mountaineers established Camp 3 at 6600m and now intend to push on to 7000m.

According to the website www.thenews.com, Pakistan's Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif presided an emergency meeting, underlining that these events pose a serious threat to national security and that all measures must be taken to catch the gunmen.

The Diamir Base Camp and the entire area continues to be controlled by both the police and army but at present there is no trace of the terrorists who, in the night between Saturday and Sunday, killed 9 alpinists and a Pakistani guide and cook.

The precise number of victims is still not clear. According to altitudepakistan.blogspot.it, Alexandra Dzik sent a message stating the dead included Ernest Marksaitis from Lithuania (a member of the international expedition led by Dzik), two alpinists from Slovakia, three from the Ukraine, three from China, one from Nepal and one from Pakistan.