13 people die in avalanche in southern Russia. Most were National Guard troops who had traveled there for training.
At least 13 people have died in an avalanche that struck the Bezengi Gorge in Kabardino-Balkaria. The avalanche broke off Mount Mizhirgi on the evening of September 6 and buried a group of 33 climbers on the slope. Ten people made it down on their own, while six others were injured and hospitalized. By the morning of September 9, rescuers from Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry had found the bodies of 13 dead climbers, with the search continuing for four more. Rescue efforts are being complicated by “dangerous, rugged terrain” and the risk of another snow collapse, the ministry stated.
The moment the avalanche came down
According to sources cited by the Russian business daily Kommersant, the avalanche killed 12 National Guard troops and other security personnel who had traveled to Bezengi for mountain training. The Russian law enforcement-linked Telegram channel Shot and the Russian security services-linked Telegram channel Baza claimed that fighters from the elite “Vityaz” Special Forces Center of Rosgvardiya were among the dead. Rosgvardiya confirmed that some of the dead had served in its ranks but denied reports that “Vityaz” fighters were among them.
Albert Izotov, a 70-year-old climber from St. Petersburg, was also killed in the avalanche. He had traveled to the gorge as a civilian instructor training security personnel, the Alpine Climbing Federation of Russia stated. At the time the avalanche struck, Izotov’s group was carrying out a training exercise. “Nothing of this size had ever come down before. It all collapsed, jumped over the glacier, and fell on the group that was holding the exercise,” said Alexander Yakovenko, chairman of the federation’s sport climbing committee.
The Bezengi Gorge disaster is the deadliest mass fatality event in Russia’s mountains since 2002, when the film crew of Sergei Bodrov Jr. died. That year, a glacier collapsed onto the camp of the crew filming Svyaznoy “The Messenger” in the Karmadon Gorge in North Ossetia, killing at least 125 people, including the actor himself. Russia has recorded four mass fatality events in its mountains over the past 25 years, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case on charges of negligence, and military investigators are handling the investigation. The federation emphasized that the training involved experienced climbers at a site it considered safe. “I really don’t understand where the negligence is here. Everything that needed to be done was done correctly, as part of conducting exercises like this,” said Yakovenko, a representative of the federation.
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