Foreign News
Top climber falls to death after rare Himalayan feat
A leading Slovak mountain climber has died while descending a 7,234m (23,730ft) peak in Nepal, after completing the rare feat of scaling the mountain’s perilous eastern face.
Ondrej Huserka fell into a crevasse on Thursday, after he and his climbing partner ascended the Langtang Lirung mountain in the Himalayas – the 99th-highest peak in the world. The 34-year-old mountaineer had previously climbed in the Alps, Patagonia and the Pamir Mountains.
His Czech climbing partner Marek Holecek said the pair were returning to base after becoming the first mountaineers to ascend Langtang Lirung via a “terrifying” eastern route.
While rappelling a mountain wall, Mr Huserka’s rope snapped and he fell into an ice crevasse, his partner said in an emotional Facebook update posted after he returned alone.
He then “hit an angled surface after an 8m drop, then continued down a labyrinth into the depths of the glacier”.
In the Facebook post, Mr Holecek recalled hearing his partner’s cries for help and desperately trying to save him. “I rappelled down to him and stayed with him for four hours until his light faded,” Mr Holecek said.
After freeing him from the ice, Mr Holecek realised his partner was paralysed. “His star was fading as he lay in my arms,” he said.
The Slovak climbers’ association, SHS James, said adverse weather in Nepal had prevented rescue action.
“Following a phone call with Marek Holecek and his status published yesterday, and given the weather conditions under Langtang Lirung, the family and friends will have to cope with the fact that Ondrej is not with us any more,” it said in a social media post.
The Langtang Lirung mountain sits alongside other peaks in the Nepalese Himalayas and is a popular trekking destination.
Judith Swift, a climber who visited Langtang in the spring of this this year, said it was described to her by a local Nepalese Sherpa as “the killer mountain”. “Not many people have summited it and many, including now sadly Ondrej Huserka, have died climbing it,” she told the BBC.
Mr Huserka joined the Slovak national alpinism team in 2011 and won the SHS James best ascent of the year award six times, according to his personal website. His decade-long mountaineering career took him around the world.
He completed the first ascent of the “Summer Bouquet” on Alexander Block Peak in Kyrgyzstan, and repeated a “legendary route” on the Cerro Torre’s south-east ridge in South America, his website says.
Paying tribute to the late climber, SHS James said Mr Huserka was a “top alpinist” and “world-class”.
The Slovak Spectator said he was “one of the best Slovak mountaineers”.
[BBC]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.
At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.
The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.
Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.
He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.
The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.
Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.
Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.
Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.
City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.
He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.
There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.
[BBC]
Independent Wexford TD Verona Murphy will be the next Ceann Comhairle (speaker) of Dáil Éireann.
She will become the first woman to ever hold the role after being elected by her fellow TDs (members of the Irish parliment).
Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness and Seán Ó Fearghaíl as well as Aengus Ó Snodaigh from Sinn Féin also ran for the position.
Politicians in the Republic of Ireland met for the first time since the general election on Wednesday.
[BBC]
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