Rescuers reach Italian after 11 die on K2

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Rescuers have reached an Italian mountaineer who refused to succumb to frostbite and exhaustion on K2 after 11 other climbers perished on the world's second-highest mountain, a Pakistani guide said on Monday.

"Marco (Confortola) is being accompanied by four rescuers and most probably, he'll be brought tonight to the Advance Base Camp (ABC) that is at an altitude of 6,000 metres," Sultan Alam, a Pakistani guide, told Reuters from K2 base camp.

Three Pakistani high-altitude porters and an American climber reached Confortola after racing up the mountain to bring him to the camp where food and medicine were waiting, he said.

Darkness had fallen and it was likely that the 37-year-old climber would spend another night on K2, before a helicopter could airlift him off the towering pyramid of rock and ice.

Confortola's feet were in "very bad" shape but he appeared to have saved his hands, Agostino Da Polenza, head of the Ev-K2-CNR mountaineering group in Italy, told Reuters after speaking to the lost climber by satellite phone.

"Of course, of course, I'll keep going. Imagine if I gave up now," Da Polenza quoted Confortola as saying on Monday before being reached by the rescuers.

A Pakistani army helicopter had earlier plucked two Dutch climbers off the slopes of the remote 8,611 metre (28,240 foot) peak, deep in the Karakoram range, bordering China.

Pakistani authorities confirmed that 11 climbers perished in the deadliest episode in K2's history but rescuers were unsure whether anyone else was missing.