Bad weather ends search for missing UK girl

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia -- Bad weather has forced Malaysian rescuers to again abandon their hunt for a 17-year-old British girl missing for five days in one of Asia's highest mountain.

Fierce wind, rain and thick fog barred searchers from moving up the 4,101-meter (13,455-foot) Mount Kinabalu, where Ellie James of Cornwall in southwest England disappeared while climbing down the peak on Borneo Island last Thursday.

"Bad weather this morning stopped the rescuers from going out," Sabah Parks assistant director Paul Basintal told Reuters.

Ellie's anguished parents and two brothers, who were all on the holiday trek, waited for news at a hotel in Kundasang, a town near Mount Kinabalu. They have declined to speak to reporters.

Rescuers tried to set off early Monday to comb the area around Kampung Kiau, a village at the foot of St John's Peak, where Ellie's brother 15-year-old brother Henry was found on Thursday after being separated from the main trekking party along with Ellie. Ellie's father, Bruce James, 54, and mother Claire, 49, alerted park rangers when they realized the two were missing, but when native guides only found Henry six hours later.

Rangers have said Ellie could be somewhere around the St John's and South Peak areas on top of Low's Gully, where a group of British troops got lost during a 1994 training exercise.

Poor visibility

"The search party went out at first light but visibility is still poor because of the weather," a police spokesman said from the town of Ranau at the foot of the mountain in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo Island.

It was the second time when the searchers had to call off the hunt after heavy rains, gusts and poor light forced them to break off their efforts on Sunday as northern Borneo caught the blast of a tropical depression.

Around 50 soldiers, police, park rangers and native guides, along with an air force helicopter, are involved in the hunt.

Temperatures on the mountain's plateau, where the girl went missing, can fluctuate between 7 and - 7 degrees Celsius, depending on wind conditions. In the daytime, during clearer weather, it can reach up to 20 degrees Celsius.

The girl, her two brothers and their parents, were among a group of 15 British trekkers who began climbing the mountain on Wednesday.

Ellie's father, Bruce James, 54, and mother Claire, 49, alerted park rangers when they realized Ellie and one of her brothers, Henry, 15, were missing.

Ellie and Henry were separated in the heavy mists as the weather deteriorated but Henry was found six hours later by park rangers and native Dusun guides.

Rangers have said Ellie could be somewhere around the St John's and South Peak areas on top of Low's Gully, where a group of British troops got lost during a 1994 training exercise.

"Difficult to survive"

Rangers have said Ellie could be somewhere around the St John's and South Peak areas on top of Low's Gully, where a group of British troops got lost during a 1994 training exercise.

Veteran climber Wan Abdul Rahman Wan Abdullah told Reuters the mountain has been blanketed by clouds for the past few weeks.

"It is hard to climb the mountain in this weather, let alone conduct a search and rescue mission," he said. Wan Abdul Rahman, who has climbed the mountain several times, said survival would be difficult in such conditions.

"The cold bites you and the winds freeze you. It is very difficult to be stuck there now," he said. He said there was plenty of water but food was hard to come by. "There are no animals at that height and the only thing edible is jungle shoots."

Around 30,000 people climb Mount Kinabalu every year, many making the ascent at night in order to catch the sunrise from the peak of Borneo's best-known landmark.

Reuters contributed to this report.