At least 67 people have died after a passenger plane crashed Sunday with 72 people on board in Pokhara, a tourist town in central Nepal, authorities said.
According to a senior administrative official in the Kaski district, quoted by the Associated Press (AP), rescue teams are touring the crash site, near Pokhara International Airport, and hope to find more bodies.
The deputy inspector of the Nepal Police, Rudra Thapa, quoted by the Kathmandu Post newspaper, assures that the Nepali authorities recovered at least 25 bodies after the accident with a Yeti Airlines plane, the Spanish agency EFE advances.
According to data provided by Yeti Air Lines to the Kathmandu Post, the plane was carrying 68 passengers and four crew members.
Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said the plane had left the capital Kathmandu and was operating a domestic route to Pokhara, calling on security professionals and the general public to help with the rescue efforts. .
Pokhara, located 200 kilometers west of Kathmandu, is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular Himalayan trekking route.
Images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke at the crash site as rescuers and large groups of people gathered around the wreckage. Nepalese soldiers are also involved in the rescue efforts at the crash site.
It is still unclear what caused the plane to crash, as Nepal has a patchy record on air safety.
Last year, 22 people died when a plane crashed into a mountain in Nepal. In 2018, an American-Bangladeshi passenger plane originating from Bangladesh crashed while landing in Kathmandu, killing 49 of 71 people on board.
In 1992, all 167 people on board a Pakistan International Airlines plane died near Kathmandu in the deadliest plane crash in Nepal’s history.
Nepal’s airline industry has prospered in recent years, transporting goods and people to hard-to-reach areas, as well as foreign trekkers and climbers.
However, the sector has had security problems due to a lack of pilot training and aircraft maintenance.
Since 2013, the European Union has prohibited Nepalese airlines from accessing European airspace for security reasons.
The Himalayan country also has some of the most isolated and complex routes in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks that challenge even experienced pilots.
The pilots say Nepal also lacks the infrastructure to make accurate weather forecasts, especially in remote areas with rugged mountainous terrain where the weather changes rapidly.
* News updated at 10:16 am
Source: TSF
