Sunday January 15, 2023 | 9:12 a.m.
A plane with 72 passengers crashed in Nepal for reasons that are still unknown and among the people on board the aircraft was an Argentine. At least 67 people died as a result of the abrupt fall of the ship belonging to Yeti Airlines.
The tragic event occurred when the plane was trying to land in Pokhara, a tourist town in central Nepal. The aircraft was carrying 68 passengers, including 15 foreign nationals, and four crew members, according to a statement from the Nepal Civil Aviation Authority.
The foreigners were five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, one Irishman, one Australian, one Argentinean, and one Frenchman. The moment in which the ATR 72 twin-engine plane fell abruptly was recorded in a video that quickly went viral on social networks.
The flight, coming from Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, crashed shortly before 11 local time (2:15 Argentine time) near Pokhara, in the center of the country, where it was supposed to land. This city is an important crossing point for foreign pilgrims and mountaineers.
The burned-out fuselage of the device was in a deep ravine between the old Pokhara airport, created in 1958, and the new international terminal in this city, inaugurated on January 1.
“The plane crashed in a ravine, so it is difficult to remove the bodies. The search and rescue operation continues. No survivors have been found so far,” an army spokesman, Krishna Prasad Bhandari, told AFP.
A local official initially said “some” survivors were taken to hospital, but this was not confirmed by Yeti Airlines or other sources.
After the accident, rescuers tried to put out the fire among the remains of the device, an ATR 72 powered by two turboprop engines.
