SKARDU : A land and air search was launched Sunday morning to locate Pakistan’s Muhammad Ali Sadpara and two foreign climbers who went missing while attempting to summit the world’s second-highest mountain, K2.

Two teams are taking part in the search operation, including one aboard a Pakistan Army helicopter while the other scouring the K2 trail to rescue the mountaineers.

Sadpara, John Snorri from Iceland and Jaun Pablo Mohr from Chile were on the mission to scale K2 but lost contact after they started their push for the K2 summit from camp 3 at midnight between Thursday and Friday.

A search operation on Saturday failed to trace the whereabouts of the three. Earlier, a Bulgarian mountaineer was confirmed to have died on K2.