San Giovanni a Piro (Italy) (AFP)

Italian rescuers began on Monday to recover the body of Simon Gautier, a 27-year-old French hiker found dead in a ravine nine days after injuring himself in southern Italy, authorities said.

Members of the alpine rescue team have been watching the body found Sunday night, and the delicate operations to rebuild it began at dawn.

In this steep area where the cliffs plunge into the sea, in the town of San Giovanni a Piro, about 200 km south of Naples, the rescuers placed the body on a stretcher and sent it down for help. from ropes to a small beach below.

From there, a Coast Guard star had to pick him up and take him to a port at midday to hand him over to the authorities.

An autopsy must be carried out, in particular to determine if a faster and more massive mobilization of the rescue could have saved him.

27 years old, athletic and organized, Simon Gautier lived for two years in Rome to write a thesis in art history.

He had left on Thursday, August 8, with water and food, for several days of solo trekking along the coast, but had called for help the next morning, explaining that he broke his two legs. falling off a cliff.

Unfortunately, he could not tell where he was. "In the middle of nowhere, on the coast". And it was not possible to locate his phone.

- "We could do more" -

It was only after a strong mobilization of his relatives and calls in the media that testimony made it possible to restrict the vast area of ​​research and that experienced reinforcements arrived on the spot.

"There have been mistakes from the beginning to the end, from the moment the rescue machine set off," denounced the young man's friends to Italian media. "We could do more and especially, the efforts that have been made in recent days should have been made from August 9".

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, for his part thanked Sunday evening the Italian authorities "who mobilized to find him", while expressing his "sadness".

Saturday, the prefecture had assured in a statement that everything had been done from the call for help to locate the young man and then try to find him, in a large steep area that originally stretched over 140 km2.

Initially few, specialists (firefighters, alpine rescue, dog teams) were a hundred on Sunday Sunday, nine days after the disappearance of Simon Gautier, with a helicopter and drones.

"As you can imagine, we are all exhausted, both physically and psychologically," reacted on social networks a friend of the young man, about the 20 or so relatives rushed to survey the trails in search of him.

A pool opened Sunday on the internet to financially support those of them with resources course has raised nearly 4,000 euros.

© 2019 AFP