KATHMANDU, MAY 29 - Reinhold Messner, the Italian who was the first person to reach Mt Everest without supplementary oxygen, has termed European climbers involved in the Everest brawl “parasites.”

“Sherpas fix ropes and ladders for hundreds of Everest aspirants and when anyone go up without ropes and claim to be special are parasites,” he said at the Everest Diamond Jubilee celebrations at the British Embassy in Kathmandu.

As the climbing season began this year, mountaineers Ueli Steck of Switzerland and Italian Simone Moro, along with a British photographer, had a fight with a group of high-altitude Sherpas over climbing rights.