On July 27, Mohammed Hassan was involved in a fall accident on the world’s second highest mountain, K2. Images and videos from the accident have circulated on social media after the incident, according to AFP.
Among other things, two climbers from Austria, Philip Fläming and Wilhelm Steindl, have shared videos showing how several climbers pass Mohammed Hassan – without providing any help.
– People stepped over him on the way to the top, says Wilhelm Steindl BBC.
– I was really shocked. And I was really sad. I started crying about the situation and people just passing him by without helping to save him.
The Norwegian climber is singled out
The accident ended with the 27-year-old losing his life, something that has stirred emotions in the climbing world. One of the climbers who has received harsh criticism is the Norwegian Kristin Harila, who was caught on film in connection with the accident.
On the same day that Mohammed Hassan died, she broke a world record. She became the fastest so far to climb the world’s 14 highest mountains.
The British Daily Mail calls her a “selfish mountaineer” and on social media the tone has been even harsher, AFP reports. The climber has also received several death threats.
After accusations that she neglected to help Mohammed Hassan to reach the top instead, she is now hitting back on Instagram. In a long post, Kristin Harila states that she and her team tried to help the 27-year-old for an hour and a half.
“Heartbreaking”
According to her, she and her team did not continue climbing until they saw that several people remained at the crash site.
“I thought that Hassan would get all the help he could, and that he would be able to get down,” she writes in the post, which has received almost 2,500 comments.
She says the situation was “heartbreaking”.
When Kristin Harila and her team were on their way down from the mountain, after breaking the world record, they received word that Mohammed Hassan had died.
“At the base camp we were told that people thought no one had helped him, but we had. We did our best,” she writes.
An investigation has been launched
The AFP news agency has spoken to Karar Haidari, secretary of the sports organization Alpine Club of Pakistan, who states that about 100 climbers climbed K2 on the day Mohammed Hassan died.
The local tourism authority, which among other things is responsible for issuing permits for climbing, said in a statement that it had launched an investigation into the incident.