Kathmandu, Nepal.- A total of 68 bodies have been recovered after a local passenger plane carrying 72 people crashed in the Pokhara region of central Nepal. Efforts are continuing to find the remaining four, authorities said.
“So far, we have found the bodies of 68 people,” Jagannath Niroula, spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), told Xinhua.
Ajay KC, police chief of the Kaski district, where Pokhara is located, told Xinhua earlier that the bodies were found at the crash site in the Seti River gorge, which is more than 200 meters deep.
Brigadier General Krishna Prasad Bhandari, a spokesman for the Nepal Army, said many of the bodies were unrecognizable and 80 percent of the plane had been charred by fire.
Rescuers are searching for the remaining bodies, he told Xinhua.
The ill-fated Yeti Airlines ATR-72 plane took off from Kathmandu for Pokhara at 10:30 a.m. local time and lost contact with air traffic control at 10:50 a.m. local time, CAAN said in a statement.
According to the agency, there were 68 passengers and four crew members on board the flight, including 15 foreigners, including five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans, one Australian, one Irishman, one Argentinean and one Frenchman.
Prem Nath Thakur, director general of Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, said the plane had been cleared to land before crashing in the Seti River gorge.
The weather does not appear to have been a factor in the crash as it had been “very good” in Pokhara since morning, Thakur told a news conference, noting that the pilots also reported no technical problems.
Among the passengers on board the flight were three children and three babies, Thakur added.
Nepal’s Cabinet declared national mourning for the victims and decided to form a five-member committee to investigate the cause of the accident, Industry, Trade and Supply Minister Abdul Khan told Xinhua.
The Cabinet has also ordered airline operators to check their planes on a regular and mandatory basis, the minister said.
In May 2022, a passenger plane operated by Tara Air crashed in the Nepalese district of Mustang, killing all 22 people on board.
