Foreign News
Everest guide survived six-day ordeal by eating chocolate and ‘chewing ice’
The Nepali guide discovered crawling down Everest six days after he was last seen alive has told the BBC he survived by “chewing ice” and eating a few chocolates he found in his pocket.
Dawa Sherpa was adamant he did not “go missing” on the descent down, but instead was forced to “stay behind” after his oxygen ran out.
It had been assumed Dawa Sherpa had perished on the mountain, with his family back in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu starting to perform last rites before he was spotted by a clean up team “sliding” down the mountain towards Base Camp.
He was airlifted to hospital in Kathmandu, where he spoke to the BBC while receiving treatment for dehydration, frostbite and a fractured bone.
“I didn’t think I would be alive,” he told BBC Nepali on Friday. “I thought I would perish this way.”
Climber Chris Thrall was the last person known to have seen Dawa Sherpa alive before he was rescued near the Khumbu Icefall on Thursday.
The former British soldier said the 57-year-old was sitting on his backpack just above Camp 3 – around 7,500m (24,600ft) – “as he had done hundreds of times before to take a short rest”.
Thrall continued to descend alone for what he estimated to be about 50-100m before he came across another member of their group, a “Polish climber with no oxygen, battling fairly severe frostbite”.
“So immediately my attention turned to the weakest member of the trio. And that was that,” he told the BBC’s Newshour programme.
“As I look back up the mountain, as I helped this guy descend, Hillary Dawa didn’t appear to have moved, and certainly wasn’t descending, because we would have seen his head torch.”
Up above, Dawa Sherpa told the BBC he had found himself in trouble.
“As the oxygen ran out, I couldn’t walk,” he explained.
“I didn’t eat anything for the first two days. Then I began chewing ice. It pained my teeth. I chewed the ice hard.”
Then he discovered some chocolates in his pocket, and managed to get some melted ice to drink.
He made his way down slowly – only to fall into a crevasse, according to two different people who spoke to Dawa Sherpa about his ordeal.
For two-and-a-half days he was trapped, they said, unable to find a way out.
Then an avalanche sent snow tumbling into the crevasse – and gave him the first hope he had had in days.
“Stepping on the snow, I stood up and looked above… It felt I could get out from there,” he told the BBC.
Once he had scrambled out, he found ropes nearby which helped his manoeuvre further down the world’s tallest mountain.
Another avalanche threatened his progress, but he was determined to keep going.
“I got through the snow and moved downwards. I walked throughout that night.
“Then, I came close to the base camp.”
It was there he saw the first people he had seen in almost a week.
“Its boys were going up to collect the waste. I met them. They carried me down.”
News of his survival was met with shock and delight by the wider sherpa community, the climbers he had been with, and his own family.
Five people have died during this year’s climbing season, with more than 300 dying since records began in the 1920s.
Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions which was overseeing search efforts, called it a “true self-rescue”.
“Dawa managed to survive against all odds for days. It’s nothing short of a miracle,” he said.
When Thrall first saw comments on social media saying Dawa Sherpa, also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa after famed mountaineer Edmund Hillary, had been found alive, he said he thought it was “spam”.
“It’s kind of crazy one minute to be fighting back tears with his daughter, and then the next minute to see him crawling into town,” Thrall told BBC’s Newshour. “It’s absolutely amazing, beyond words.”
His wife, Damu Sherpa, told news agency AFP she had given up hope, until seeing a picture of her husband.
“We thought he was no more, and had already begun his last rites,” she said as she waited to meet him at the hospital.
“I was so surprised when I saw the photos and recognised him – he was still wearing a cap I knitted for him.”
“He recognised me … is good and speaks,” his daughter Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa told Reuters news agency later, after visiting him. “We are happy.”
Doctors at Kathmandu’s HAMS Hospital say Dawa Sherpa has been “receiving comprehensive medical care in the intensive care unit”, but is stable and his “dehydration is showing significant improvement”.
More than 1,000 have summited Everest summit this season, making it the busiest on record.
[BBC]
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
A flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel was diverted to Saudi Arabia after issuing a distress signal, in what appeared to be a hijacking attempt, on Wednesday.
The Flydubai flight FZ1073 was diverted as it flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv through Jordanian airspace, prompting Israel to deploy warplanes, the Reuters news agency reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one of the pilots had stabbed the other and then tried to crash the plane. He added that Israel was preparing for other “potential threats” after the incident.
There has been no official confirmation of a hijacking attempt, however.
Flydubai said an altercation had occurred on the flight deck and that all passengers were safe and accounted for. The plane was secured by on-duty crew travelling onboard, it added.
At Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport, where the plane landed, officials said both the plane’s captain and the first officer had been hospitalised after sustaining injuries. Both were taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalised ties in 2020. Here’s what we know about what happened.
Footage taken onboard the plane appears to show the captain of the aircraft lying on the ground with several stab wounds, and a passenger with a bloody wound to the head.
In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes.
Yasmin Abukasis, the mother of one of the passengers onboard, said her daughter Miriam thought she was going to die. “The plane started to lose control,” she told journalists at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, before other pilots onboard took control of the aircraft.
Flight tracking data indicated the plane descended over 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai. Flightradar24 said on X that an initial general emergency signal designated by code 7700 was issued at around 05:31 UTC and was later changed to another emergency signal with code 7500 declaring “unlawful interference”.
Passenger Dalia Shpigel told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that some people seated towards the front of the plane broke into the cockpit after the plane began to descend and they realised something was wrong.
“An hour before landing, we felt that there was no control over the plane, that it was starting to jump,” she said. “The guys saw that the plane had begun to dive and broke into the cockpit.”
Netanyahu said he later spoke to one of the Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit and overpowered one of the pilots who was reportedly trying to sabotage the aircraft’s systems.
“I salute these heroes who demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and courage,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster.”
Timeline of events
03:05 – Flight FZ1073 takes off from Dubai05:21 – Altitude fluctuations begin05:22 – Aircraft drops more than 14,000 ft in under 30 seconds05:31 – Signal from aircraft changes to 7700 (general emergency)05:38 – Signal changes to 7500 (unlawful interference)06:45 – Aircraft lands at Tabuk Regional Airport
[Aljazeera]
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