The body of Luca Sinigaglia, the Italian mountaineer who died on Pobeda Peak (7,439 meters) on the Kyrgyzstan-China border, will not be recovered. The 49-year-old from Milan, who worked in cybersecurity, was unmarried with no children. He had been attempting to reach a stranded Russian climber, Natalia Nagovitsyna, to bring her to safety when he died.
In a last-minute decision last night, the Kyrgyz government revoked the authorization for the team of Italian rescuers to proceed. “I have news that the mission is canceled,” explained Agostino Da Polenza, a mountaineer and expedition organizer. “The Italians were ready for the flight and had moved toward the base camp, and then the authorization was revoked without any explanation.”
Da Polenza, an expert on mountaineering expeditions who was in contact with the rescuers, offered a plausible hypothesis for the sudden reversal: “The Kyrgyz authorities may have given the Russian climber up for lost, for dead. She was evidently their priority, so at this point, they have called off the mission. It was always spoken of as a parallel rescue: the living person and the recovery of Luca’s body.”
“The authorities in Kyrgyzstan were very concerned about safety,” the alpinist added, “so they spent two or three days gathering information and making assessments. Then, yesterday, they granted the authorization, and last night they revoked it. The flight was scheduled for this morning at 5:28; now the Italians have returned to Bishkek and will, unfortunately, return to Italy.”
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