A rescue team led by prominent Myanmar tycoon U Tay Za left Yangon on September 10 to search for two mountaineers who went missing about a week ago after climbing Southeast Asia's highest peak, an airport official said.
Expedition organisers said U Aung Myint Myat and U Wai Yan Min Thu lost contact with other members of their team after reaching the summit of Hkakaborazi, on the eastern edges of the Himalayas in the far north of Kachin State, on August 31.
The two climbers, from the Yangon University Hiking and Mountaineering Association, were the first members of an all-Myanmar team to summit Hkakaborazi, which is 5,881 metres (19,295 feet) high.
U Tay Za, who was closely linked to the former ruling junta and is blacklisted by the United States, left Yangon to launch a rescue mission to the mountain, in an area where he was stranded after a helicopter accident three years ago.
"The team left by their special flight this afternoon," an official at Yangon International Airport told AFP, adding it would be based in Putao in northern Kachin State.
U Tay Za, who runs a diversified conglomerate including construction, hotels and aviation, is an enthusiastic mountaineer.
He said on his Facebook page on September 9 that his Htoo Foundation was sending two helicopters to the zone.
"Their families and friends are really worried about them."
The Htoo Foundation said bad weather had hampered earlier attempts to search for the men.
In February 2011, U Tay Za was stranded for three days on another mountain, Fukanrazi, after the helicopter in which he was travelling to survey a mountaineering expedition bogged in deep snow on landing and was unable to take-off.
He was travelling with five people, including the pilot, and two of them later needed treatment for frostbite, Mizzima reported at the time.
They were rescued by a helicopter hired from a company based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
