Committee formed to probe porter’s death

Foreign mountaineers say ‘no one stopped to help him’

In response to horrific visuals regarding 27-year-old Pakistani porter Muhammad Hassan’s death on K2 last month, the Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) government has formed an inquiry committee to investigate the tragic death.

According to the shocking videos and photos taking turn on social media, a group of climbers crossed Hassan’s path after he fell off a ledge.

Reportedly, the porter died a few hours later at a narrow path known as the bottleneck, which is 8,200 metres high.
G-B's tourism department has ordered an investigation to look into the matter.

The August 7 order claimed that some “distressing” videos and photos had been circulating on social media regarding Hassan's death and it was "crucial to ascertain the facts surrounding the incident."

Mountaineers Philip Flamig and Wilhelm Steindl, who posted pictures of the incident, claimed that Hassan was alive when “people climbed over him.”

"We saw a guy alive, lying in the traverse in the bottleneck. And people were stepping over him on the way to the summit. And there was no rescue mission," Steindl told the BBC.

"I was really shocked. And I was really sad. I started to cry about the situation that people just passed him and there was no rescue mission."

Hassan was being treated by one of the climbers "while everyone else" moved towards the summit in a "heated, competitive summit rush", Flamig told Austria's Der Standard newspaper.

The committee set up will not only look into what exactly happened to Hassan on July 27, but also whether Hassan should have been allowed up there or not -- based on his mountaineering skills in the first place.