(Pokhara) Nepalese hospital staff on Tuesday began returning to families the bodies of victims of the plane crash that crashed in Nepal on Sunday with 72 people on board, the country’s worst air disaster since 1992.
The plane, a twin-engine ATR 72 from the Nepalese company Yeti Airlines which was carrying 68 passengers and four crew members, crashed on Sunday while on approach to Pokhara airport (center of the country).
All occupants of the aircraft, including six children and 15 foreign nationals, are presumed dead, authorities said.
Rescuers have worked almost tirelessly since the accident to recover the human remains among the debris of the aircraft and charred seats in a ravine.
By Tuesday morning, 70 bodies had been found, police official AK Chhetri told AFP.
“We recovered a body last night. But it’s three pieces. We’re not sure if it’s three bodies or just one. This will only be confirmed after a DNA test,” he explained.
The search for the other two missing bodies has resumed, over a radius extended to three kilometers instead of two with the reinforcement of four drones, he said.
Autopsies and DNA tests
On Tuesday, hospital workers dressed in blue and white protective suits and face masks loaded bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting onto military trucks, past weeping relatives who stood embracing.
The trucks then left for the airport from where the bodies were to be flown to Kathmandu.
Among the victims is a journalist, Tribhuban Poudel, whose body was placed on a beer covered with orange marigolds in front of which relatives paraded under the winter sun.
According to Mr. Chhetri, eight bodies have already been handed over to families while 14 others will undergo an autopsy in Pokhara and 48 have been transferred to Kathmandu for a DNA test allowing restitution to their families.
The ATR 72, flying from Kathmandu, crashed shortly before 11 a.m. (12:15 a.m. EST) on Sunday near the airport in Pokhara, Nepal’s second-largest city, a center of pilgrimage and an important point of passage for foreign trekkers.
The cause of the accident is not yet known, but a video posted on social networks showed the twin-engine bank suddenly to the left as it approached the airport, followed by a loud explosion.
Black boxes handed over to authorities
The black boxes of the plane, manufactured by ATR, a subsidiary of Airbus and Italian group Leonardo, were handed over to authorities on Monday, said Bikram Raj Gautam, head of Pokhara International Airport.
Experts from the French Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA) were expected in Nepal on Tuesday, ATR told AFP.
“It appears that the flight, which was supposed to land on the east side, headed west and landed after making a turn. We do not know if this is due to an error or a technical reason,” local official Tek Bahadur KC told AFP.
According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the pilot of the aircraft, Anju Khatiwada, had joined the Nepalese civil aviation after the death of her husband, killed in the accident of a small passenger plane in 2006 .
Nepalese civil aviation, essential for supplying the remote regions of the country and transporting hikers and mountaineers there, has experienced a real boom in recent years.
Poor equipment maintenance and lax enforcement of safety rules weigh on the Nepalese air transport sector despite international recommendations.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese carriers from its airspace for security reasons.
Nepal has some of the most remote and complex trails in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks that challenge even the most seasoned pilots to approach.
In 1992, a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft crashed on the approach to Kathmandu causing the death of its 167 passengers, the deadliest air accident in the country’s history.