Itongadol.- A helicopter with an IDF and Hazalah rescue team is searching Friday morning for Or Asraf, 22, an Israeli trekker who was last seen in the Langtang area of Nepal, before a massive earthquake struck the Himalayan state last Saturday.
Members of Asraf’s Golani Brigade’s elite Egoz Reconnaissance Unit and his father are also in Nepal helping with the search.
Immediately after the quake, 250 Israelis were unaccounted for, but all except for Asraf have since been located.
“A massive effort is underway to locate Or Asraf,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.
“We will do everything we can to bring him [Asraf] home,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said, and assured reporters at a press conference in Jerusalem that all the country’s resources had been mobilized to find Asraf, who is technically considered to be unaccounted for rather than missing.
In addition on Friday, Israel together with Harrel Insurance Company was also able to extricate to safety 17 Israeli trekkers who had been stranded in that area, after damage from the earthquake blocked all their exit paths.
They could only be reached by helicopter. Bad weather had hampered efforts to reach them on Thursday.