Tourist dies while taking selfie at Machu Picchu ruins

A 51-year-old German tourist plummeted to his death while pretending to fly for a selfie atop Machu Picchu ruins in Peru, media said on Monday.

Oliver Park lost his balance while leaping to imitate flying and fell off the cliff, tech website digitaltrends.com reported.

Park ignored warning signs posted around the restricted area and was posing for a mid-leap photo last week when he fell off Machu Picchu mountain, which overlooks the ancient Incan citadel.

His body was recovered from a ravine on a day after the accident, BBC reported.

Selfie deaths have become too common all over the world, including in India, and this was the latest in a long list of accidents suffered by tourists as they posed for self-portraits in scenic locations.

In March, a man shot himself in the face when he snapped a selfie with what he thought was an unloaded gun in Washington.

Between January 2016 and January 2014, "49 people have died while attempting to photograph themselves; the average age of the victims is 21 years old and 75 per cent of them are male," according to a report by data firm Priceonomics.

Ironically, clicking a selfie proved to be more lethal than getting mauled by a shark in 2015.

There were at least 12 selfie-related deaths globally while only eight people died in shark attacks in 2015, tech website Mashable reported recently.

--IANS

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