GILGIT, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - A Pakistani helicopter plucked the last known survivor of a climbing disaster from the slopes of K2 on Wednesday, ending a gruelling five-day ordeal on the world's second highest peak.

Severely frostbitten Italian mountaineer Marco Confortola was airlifted to hospital after bad weather cleared up overnight and allowed a military chopper to pick him up at a 5,200-metre (17,060-foot) camp.

'Marco has been rescued by a helicopter from the base camp this morning,' Italian embassy spokesman Oddo Sergio told AFP, adding that he would receive medical treatment for his blackened feet.

The 37-year-old Italian was ferried to a military hospital in the northern town of Skardu after his rescue, said Mohammad Akram, vice president of Adventure Foundation Pakistan, a leading expedition operator.

'He is receiving urgent care for frostbite,' Akram said.

Confortola hobbled into base camp on the mountain on Tuesday with the help of Pakistani high-altitude porters, but he had to spend another night there when thick clouds around the peak grounded rescue choppers.

Two Dutch climbers were airlifted off K2 on Monday and are in the same hospital after they too survived Friday's catastrophic ice fall near the summit of the Himalayan mountain.

K2 is regarded by climbers as far more difficult to scale than Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, and has a rate of deaths to successful summit attempts almost five times as high.

Three South Koreans, two Nepalis, two Pakistanis, a Serbian, an Irishman, a Norwegian and a Frenchman died in Friday's avalanche, the worst disaster ever to happen on K2.

A pillar of ice broke away in a steep gully known as the Bottleneck near the summit, sweeping away fixed lines used by the mountaineers as they made their descent.

Confortola on Tuesday spoke of his joy at surviving the disaster.

'I am happy to be alive. I realise that they are all dead and that only three of us survived,' he told a member of his expedition team based in Italy, according to the Italian ANSA news agency.

'My hands are in a quite good state while my feet are black because they are frozen. But I have been able to walk,' he was quoted as saying by telephone to Agostino Da Polenza, who coordinated the rescue with Pakistani authorities.

The Italian said he was 'happy to have gone to the summit of K2, it is something that I've always dreamed of.'

Italian climbers Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli were the first to scale K2 on July 31, 1954. Between then and 2007, there were 284 successful ascents and 66 fatalities.

In the same period, Everest was summited 3,681 times, with 210 deaths.