(Pokhara) At least 67 people died on Sunday in Nepal, police said, in the deadliest air disaster in three decades in the Himalayan country.
« 31 [corps] were taken to hospitals,” police officer AK Chhetri said, adding that another 36 bodies were found in the deep ravine where the plane crashed.
“The plane crashed into gorges” where the search for bodies is “difficult”, said army spokesman Krishna Prasad Bhandari. “No survivors have been found so far,” he said, stressing that the rescue was continuing.
The Yeti Airlines plane from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu crashed shortly before 11 a.m. (12:15 a.m. Eastern) on Sunday morning near the local airport in Pokhara, central Nepal, where he was supposed to land.
This city is a gateway for religious pilgrims and trekkers from all over the world.
The carcass of the burning aircraft was found in a deep ravine between this old airport created in 1958, and the new international terminal of Pokhara opened on 1er last January.
The twin-engine aircraft was carrying 72 people – 68 passengers and four crew members, company spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told AFP.
Among them were 15 foreign nationals, including one Frenchman, five citizens of India, four Russians, two Koreans, one Australian, one Argentinian and one Irishman.
cabin on fire
Rescuers sprinkled the pieces of the twin-engine ATR 72 on Sunday to extinguish the fire, amid the debris of the aircraft, AFP journalists noted.
A video shared on social networks showed dozens of people massed around a huge blaze, releasing a thick cloud of black smoke, at the bottom of a ravine whose vegetation was already reduced to ashes.
PHOTO KRISHNA MANI BARAL, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nepalese rescue workers and civilians are gathered around the remains of the aircraft.
In another video, which AFP could not verify, a plane flies low over a residential area, banking sharply to the left, before a loud explosion.
It is the deadliest air disaster in three decades in Nepal.
In 1992, 167 people on board a Pakistan International Airlines plane died in a crash near Kathmandu. Two months earlier, a Thai Airways accident killed 113 people near the same airport.
Nepal’s airline industry has boomed in recent years, ferrying goods and people to hard-to-reach areas, as well as trekkers and foreign mountain climbers.
But it suffered from a lack of safety due to insufficient pilot training and maintenance.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese carriers from accessing its airspace for security reasons.
The Himalayan country also has some of the most isolated and tricky tracks in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks that challenge even seasoned pilots to approach.
No reliable weather forecast
Aircraft operators say Nepal lacks the infrastructure to make accurate weather forecasts, especially in remote areas with rugged mountainous terrain, where fatal accidents have occurred in the past.
The weather also changes rapidly in the mountains, creating even more challenging flying conditions.
In May 2022, the 22 people who were on board a twin-engine Twin Otter operated by the Nepalese company Tara Air – 16 Nepalese, four Indians and two Germans – died when the aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff from Pokhara. Its wreckage was found a day later, on the side of a mountain at an altitude of about 4400 meters.
After this crash, the authorities tightened the regulations, in particular so that the planes are only allowed to fly if the weather forecast is favorable throughout the journey.