68 people were confirmed dead Sunday after a plane with 72 on board crashed minutes before landing in Nepal, in country’s worst aviation disaster in three decades, news agency AFP said quoting the police.
According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), the aircraft took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am. The plane operated by Yeti Airlines was en route from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu.
The plane was close to landing at the Pokhara airport, when it crashed into a river gorge on the bank of the Seti River. The crash happened around 20 minutes after the take-off, suggesting the aircraft might have been on the descent. The flight time between the two cities is 25 minutes.
Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ called an emergency cabinet meeting soon after the crash, and the Nepal government has formed a five-member commission of inquiry to probe the incident.
The ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop aircraft plummeted into a steep gorge, smashed into pieces and burst into flames in the central city of Pokhara.
53 Nepali, 5 Indian, 4 Russian, 2 Koreans, 1 Argentinian, and one each from Ireland, Australia, and France were in the plane, the airlines said.
The aircraft took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am.
Yeti spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told AFP that 15 foreigners were on board, including five Indians, four Russians and two South Koreans, with one passenger each from Argentina, Australia, France and Ireland. The rest were Nepalis.
The five Indian passengers on board were all from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh.
One of them, Sonu Jaiswal, was apparently doing a Facebook Live shortly before the flight crashed. He is among the dead. The same video is found on his Facebook account, which is unverified.
“Thirty-one (bodies) have been taken to hospitals,” police official AK Chhetri told AFP, adding that 36 other bodies were found in the gorge where the aircraft crashed.
Rescue operations have been difficult because of a raging fire at the wreckage, Nepali journalist Dilip Thapa told media .
Nepal’s airline business has been plagued with concerns around safety, and inadequate training of staff.
The European Union has since 2013 put Nepal on the flight safety blacklist, ordering a blanket ban on all flights from the Himalayan country into its airspace, after the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) flagged safety concerns.
Hundreds of people have earlier died in horrific plane crashes in Nepal, news agency AFP has reported.
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