Armed militants attacked mountaineers near Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, killing 10 foreigners. Soon after the incident, representatives of the Pakistani extremist group "Jundallah" and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, even boasting, "We are happy to have killed them." Among the deceased were two Chinese climbers, Yang Chunfeng and Rao Jianfeng, whose bodies are expected to be repatriated to China on the 25th.
The Pakistani government stated on the 24th that, after careful investigation, the nationalities of the 10 deceased were initially misreported. The confirmed nationalities are 2 Chinese, 1 Chinese-American, 3 Ukrainians, 2 Slovaks, 1 Lithuanian, and 1 from Nepal.
Passports and belongings stolen
The Chinese Mountaineering Association stated on the 24th that it has contacted the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and domestic personnel will fly to Islamabad on the 25th to retrieve the survivors and the bodies of the deceased. Meanwhile, the Shenzhen Mountaineering Association has set up a post-incident task force responsible for communicating with the families and investigating the incident through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, around 15 to 20 gunmen kidnapped two Pakistani guides in the early hours of the 23rd local time, killed one of them, and obtained the location of the climbers’ camp from the other.
The gunmen then went to the campsite tents, stole the climbers’ passports and belongings, and killed them.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Asnahullah Asnari, stated that a subsidiary group of the Pakistani Taliban carried out the attack against foreign tourists to avenge the death of al-Qaeda leader Wali-ur-Rehman, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in May. Asnari said, “By killing foreigners, we want to send a message to the world and warn them to stop drone strikes.”
Ahmed Marwat, a spokesman for Jundallah, told British media, “These foreigners were our enemies, and we are happy to claim responsibility for killing them.”
Yang Chunfeng, Rao Jianfeng, and Zhang Jingchuan were all well-known amateur mountaineers from China. On July 31, 2012, they successfully summited K2 (also known as Mount Godwin-Austen), the world’s second-highest peak and renowned for its difficulty, via the Pakistani south side. They broke the nearly three-year record of no successful summits on the south side of K2 and became the first Han Chinese climbers to achieve this feat.
Deceased were renowned Chinese climbers
Yang Chunfeng, 45, was a professional mountain guide and owned a high-altitude exploration service company. Before his death, he had successfully climbed 10 of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000 meters. Rao Jianfeng, 49, from Guangdong, was a well-known real estate figure who began climbing in 2001 and had also summited 10 peaks over 8,000 meters. Zhang Jingchuan, 42, from Kunming, was a full-time civil servant and an amateur mountaineer who had summited 3 peaks over 8,000 meters.