A British tourist died of heart attack while climbing Mount Muztagata in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to the Kashi prefecture government Monday.

Jonathan Matthew Peacock, 39, who was climbing with a party organized by the Xinjiang Kashi Xinlu International Travel Agency, became ill on 7,546-meter mountain on July 13. He was sent back to the base camp and died while receiving medical treatment.

In another development, the body of Republic of Korea (ROK) climber Choi Jang Yong, who disappeared after losing contact with an ROK team on July 11, when it met with difficulties while climbing Mount Muztagata, was found on July 18.

Body of renowned US woman climber found in SW China  

The body of Christine Boskoff, a renowned US climber, has been found on a remote mountain in southwest China's Sichuan Province, said a local mountaineering association official on Monday.

Rescuers resumed the search for Boskoff in the Genyen Mountain this month after snow melted, and found her body near the site where the body of fellow climber Charlie Fowler was found in December, said Gao Min, deputy secretary general of the Sichuan Mountaineering Association.

The Sichuan Mountaineering Association said they appeared to have been killed in an avalanche.

Boskoff, 39, and Fowler, 52, disappeared in November. Boskoff was among the world's leading high-altitude women climbers and had ascended six of the world's peaks over 7,800 meters, including Mount Qomolangma (Mount Everest).

Fowler had been a mountain climber for 35 years and was an expert on climbing in southwestern China.

The Chinese rescuers said it was too dangerous to remove Boskoff's body from the steep slope on which she lay.

The Sichuan Mountaineering Association has informed US diplomats in China of the discovery, and is awaiting a response on how to deal with the body.

The 6,204-meter Genyen Mountain is the third highest peak in Sichuan and local Tibetans believe it is sacred.

Search for Australian Climber Continues

The search for Australian climber Andrew Clem Lindenmayer, who was reported missing in Mount Gongga last month, continues in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan.

The prefecture government has ordered seven towns in Kangding County to mobilize villagers to look for Lindenmayer.

Searchers have no clues as to his whereabouts so far, said Guo Changping, an official with the Ganzi prefecture government, on Monday.

However, last month they found a body believed to be that of a Japanese mountaineer who disappeared 26 years ago in Mount Gongga.

A 12-strong mountaineering team from Hokkaido, Japan, set out to climb Mount Gongga in May 1981, but eight members disappeared after a fall when the team was moving to an area 7,450 meters above sea level.

Gongga -- Tibetan for "highest snow-capped mountain" -- attracts both tourists and mountaineers to its soaring peaks and panoramic scenery. It has more than 20 peaks above 6,000 meters, the highest at 7,556 meters.

Eight teams comprising a total of 24 climbers have made successful ascents of the mountain between 1957 and 1999. But more than 20 people, including four Chinese, 14 Japanese, one French, one American, one Swiss and the Australian Andrew Clem Lindenmayer have gone missing on the unforgiving peak.

(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2007)