UTM mountaineers in Nepal safe

Assistant Registrar, UTM Corporate Affairs office, Sabri Ahmad said the group comprising four students and two coaches had flown to Katmandu on March 28.

He identified the six as Azim Afif Ishak, 27; Anis Zulaikha Zabani, 25; Jamhuri Jumari, 21; Azham Afzanizam Hamzah, 27; Farul Aidib Mahamad Yusoff, 21, and Ahmad Sabri Abdul Razak, 24.

Azim and his wife Anis were the coaches accompanying the team, Sabri said.

"I receive information that all of them are safe via Azim and Azham's Facebook accounts. They said the situation at Everest Base Camp now is safe but foggy," he told Bernama when contacted, here today.

They also downloaded several pictures via Facebook which showed destroyed tents in the area they were located, he said.

Sabri said all of them started their climbing expedition to Camp 1 on April 21 to adapt to the weather conditions at higher altitude.

As scheduled, on April 23, they once again climbed to Camp One at a height of 6,000 metres and spend the night there and continued their climb to Camp 2 on the next day.

Today, they were supposed to be at the Camp 2 but due to bad weather they returned back to the Base Camp and all of them were expected to return to Malaysia this June, he said.

"UTM is now monitoring the latest updates there, if the situation is safe, their climbing expedition will continue but if Nepal's local authorities disallow it, we will contact our Malaysian embassy in Kathmandu.

"We hope all of them will be safe," Sabri said.

For Mount Everest climbers, normally they will take more than a month to adapt with the mountain surroundings before stopping at each base camp. There are four base camps at altitude between 5,300 metres and 8,850 metres, before reaching the summit.

The strong earthquake measuring 7.9 on the richter scale occurred at 2.45pm Malaysian time. It was reported that there was destruction of properties and loss of life.

Meanwhile, news reports also reported several climbing teams were believed to be missing resulting from a major avalanche at the highest summit in the world following the earthquake.

The reports said neighboring India also felt the strong tremors especially in the northerns area following the earthquake whose epicentre was 77 kilometrees from Kathmandu.