At least 68 Died in Nepal Plane Crashes,5 Indians onboard
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
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 NDTV. 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.
According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), the aircraft took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 A.M.
e 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.
“We don’t know right now if there are survivors,” the airline’s spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula told news agency AFP.
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.
of people have earlier died in horrific plane crashes in Nepal, news agency AFP has reported.