Taliban Slaughters Innocent Mountaineers at 12,000 Feet

The lengths to which the Taliban will go to massacre innocent people have quite literally reached new heights. Saturday, in a mountaineering camp above 12,000 feet in Pakistan, 10 mountaineers from various countries including America, the Ukraine, Slovakia, China, Lithuania and Nepal, were shot and killed at point-blank range. An umbrella Taliban movement called Junood ul-Hifsa claimed they murdered the climbers in revenge for US drone strikes on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The massacre occurred at a camp at the foot of Nanga Parbat; the murderers dressed as police. Manzoor Hussain, president of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, said on Saturday, “We are really shocked, traumatized and full of anger. Pakistan is known among the mountaineering community. It was a brutal massacre … These people were killed for no reason.” He stated that the roughly 40 remaining climbers have been evacuated to the northern city of Gilgit, continuing, “Local authorities have evacuated them. They have all been informed of this incident. We are reviewing the overall security situation,” and concluded that further expeditions on Nanga Parbat this summer would be forbidden and  winter climbs would need a security review.

Hussain said the attack was carried out by those who were well-trained and had local help: “It took place at 4,200 meters. It has to be the work of well-trained people. It takes two to three days to reach (the camp). The body needs to acclimatize for climbing up. How they went undetected is a big question.” He said that other expeditions in Pakistan on mountains higher than 8,000 meters, including K2, the world’s second highest mountain, would continue because the army was there to protect the climbers.