Two climbers who went missing while scaling the world’s ninth-highest peak in northern Pakistan, Italy’s Daniele Nardi and Briton Tom Ballard, have been confirmed dead.
The Italian ambassador to Pakistan, Stefano Pontecorvo, tweeted on Saturday that bodies found at an altitude of 5,900 metres have been identified as “those of Daniele and Tom.”
Nardi and Ballard lost contact with the base camp on Feb. 24 while trying to climb the 8,126-metre Nanga Parbat peak.
The pair was at over 6,000 metres when they went missing.
Hundreds of mountaineers, most of them from Europe, try to scale half a dozen peaks in Pakistan every year in summer. However, only a few make attempts in winter.
Avalanches and bad weather have been the cause of death for climbers in the past.