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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A British mountaineer fell from the top of Mount Halgurd and rolled down around 700 meters over rocks, snow, and a rugged mountain, riling up emergency teams to run to his rescue in the early hours of Wednesday.
David Joy, 55, from the UK was trying to climb Mount Halgurd with a group of local and international hikers.
“Under my supervision, we formed three rescue teams. They left for their mission at three different times. The mountaineer had broken his legs, suffering from critical pains because the area is blanketed with snow and the snow had become a piece of ice," Younis Qadir, director of Soran Civil Defense, told Rudaw's Aandam Jabar.
After eight hours of a search mission underway, he was taken to Erbil due to critical wounds he sustained.
Mount Halgurd, the highest peak in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, is visited by hundreds of domestic and foreign tourists and climbers every year.
The mount, some 170 kilometers north of Erbil, forms part of the Zagros mountain range on the border between Iran and the Kurdistan Region.
At 3,607 meters above sea level, its peak - the highest in Iraq - is snow-capped all year round. Its foothills are home to clean springs and meadows.
According to the Soran Civil Defense directorate, this is the sixth incident involving visitors falling off the mountain in the past four years.
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