The deaths of an Irish and a British climber on Mount Everest took the toll from a deadly week on the world’s highest peak to 10, expedition organisers said Saturday.

British climber Robin Fisher, 44, reached the summit Saturday morning but collapsed when he had got just 150 metres back down the slope.

“Our guides tried to help but he died soon after,” Murari Sharma of Everest Parivar Expedition told AFP.

On the northern Tibet side of the mountain, a 56-year-old Irish man died Friday morning, his expedition organisers confirmed in a statement on their Facebook page.

The man decided to return without reaching the summit but died in his tent at the North Col pass at 7,000 metres (22,965 feet).

Four climbers from India and one each from the United States, Austria and Nepal have already died on Everest in the past week. Another Irish mountaineer is missing presumed dead after he slipped and fell close to the summit.

A traffic jam of climbers in the Everest “death zone” has been blamed for at least four of the deaths, heightening concerns that the drive for profits is trumping safety.

AFP