On
Saturday, rescue workers recovered the bodies of 11 climbers from
Malaysia’s highest peak, the 13,435-foot-high Mount Kinabalu, after a
magnitude-5.9 earthquake struck the area on Friday, the Associated Press reports. Thirteen bodies have been recovered in all; six people are still missing.
District police official Farhan Lee Abdullah said
that nine of the bodies found on Saturday were flown out by helicopter
and two were carried down on foot. “This is a very sad day for
Kinabalu,” said Masidi Manjun, the tourism minister for the eastern
state of Sabah.
Other climbers, some with broken limbs and one in a coma, returned to the base of the mountain early Saturday morning, the AP reports.
Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan said
that the earthquake—which also damaged roads and buildings, including
schools and a hospital—was caused by a group of 10 foreigners posed nude
at the mountain’s peak. They had “showed disrespect to the sacred
mountain,” Kitingan said, and a special ritual must be conducted to
“appease the mountain spirit.”
No comments:
Post a Comment