BBC News Online: World: South Asia

Everest claims teenager's fingers

Doctors in Nepal have amputated five frost-bitten fingers of a Nepali Sherpa boy who last month failed in his attempt to become the youngest to climb Mount Everest.

Temba Tseri Sherpa was forced to give up the Everest campaign when he was just 22 metres away from the peak of the 8850-metre mountain.

Crying in pain Temba told the BBC that he was determined to give make yet another attempt to scale Everest, if he was able to find sponsors to finance the expedition.

Temba has lost three fingers of his right hand and another two of his left hand.

Attempt at record

Had he been able to reach the summit, the youth would have broken the 27-year-old record of another Nepali climber, Shambhu Tamang.

Tamang reached the summit at the age of 18.

Another Nepali teenager came close to breaking that record last year.

But lack of oxygen and eye injury forced Arbin Timilsina, who was 15, to give up climbing 100 metres from the top.

About 900 people have climbed Everest since Tenzing Norgay of Nepal and Edmund Hillary of New Zealand first did it in 1953.

More than 150 people have died during attempts to scale the world's highest peak.

Temba Tseri Sherpa may have lost his fingers but not the hope of making it to the top of Everest again.

But following the failure of the Everest campaign by two teenagers in a year on health grounds, critics have started questioning whether young people should be permitted to carry out such ventures.