Climbers missing in Malaysia after quake that claimed 13

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Rescuers on Malaysia’s highest peak searched today for six climbers after recovering 13 dead from a strong earthquake that had trapped scores of trekkers.

A magnitude-5.9 earthquake on Friday sent rocks and boulders raining down the trekking routes on 13,435-foot-high Mount Kinabalu in eastern Sabah state on Borneo island.

Nine of the bodies found Saturday were flown out by helicopter, while the other two were brought down by foot.

Most of the other climbers made it down the mountain in the darkness early Saturday, some with broken limbs and one in a coma.

One of them, Amanda Peter, said local guides told her group that a helicopter would pick them up, but when it did not, they decided to walk after a frustrating nine-hour wait.

“There were risks of us dying up there of cold overnight,” she said. “The guide said we either die of waiting or we die trying. So we all chose to try walking down ourselves.”

She said the descent was “very risky and we were all starving, dehydrated and tired but at least we tried saving ourselves.”

The two dead retrieved Friday evening were a 30-year-old local guide and a 12-year-old Singaporean student.

Police said earlier Saturday that they were looking for 17 other people, including eight Singaporeans and one each from China, the Philippines and Japan. The rest are Malaysians. The nationalities of the 11 dead recovered Saturday were not immediately clear.

About 60 rescuers and four helicopters were combing the mountain, where loose rocks and boulders that fell during the quake blocked part of the main route.

The quake also damaged roads and buildings, including schools and a hospital on Sabah’s west coast. It also broke one of the twin rock formations on the mountain known as the “Donkey’s Ears.”

The mountain will be closed for three weeks for maintenance work.