MOSCOW, November 18 (RIA Novosti) – A weeklong search operation for a British national who went missing in the North Caucasus mountains has so far yielded no results, a local news site reported.
John Stiles, head of the Danish Refugee Council’s North Caucasus branch, went missing on November 10, the council said at the time.
Stiles, 52, a skilled climber, went on a one-day hike in a mountainous area near the Fiagdon River, in Russia’s North Ossetia Republic, the council said.
Russian emergency services launched a search operation, but have refused to speak of its progress, Caucasus news site Kavkaz-uzel.ru reported Friday.
“It seems likely that John has had a climbing accident,” a representative of the Danish NGO was cited as saying last week.
The Russian North Caucasus is a hotbed of unrest fueled to a large extent by the resilient Islamist insurgency.
But the predominantly Christian North Ossetia remains largely unaffected by the ongoing struggle between the Islamists and law enforcement officers in nearby regions.
