BEIJING, October 17 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian tourists thought to be missing in China have never been lost and will fly back home on Tuesday, a senior official at the Russian Tourism Federation said on Saturday.
The Xinhua news agency reported on Friday that rescuers in the Xinjiang Province had been searching for a group of seven Russian tourists since Tuesday in an area near the Kunlun Mountains following a report that one of them was ill.
"Why searching for them if their whereabouts have been known and they just have to be fetched?" Alexei Yaroshevsky, the head of the Federation's mountaineering commission, told RIA Novosti on the phone.
Yaroshevsky said the head of the expedition, "a World class athlete," had always been in touch.
The vice president of the Russian Sports Tourism Federation, Nikolai Ryazansky, told the Ekho Moskvy radio earlier on Saturday that satellite contact with the group had been regular over the entire route.
The team, including five men and two women, were initially supposed to return to Russia on Saturday. The next flight from Urumchi will be available next Tuesday.
Yaroshevsky said the mountaineers had climbed a peak of about seven kilometers.
"This was a powerful expedition, and they made it successfully," Yaroshevsky said.
