Relatives of the passengers of a plane that crashed in the Himalayas, in tears, on May 30, 2022 at the airport in Pokhara, Nepal (AFP / PRAKASH MATHEMA)
Twenty-one bodies have been found on the slope of a mountain in the Himalayas in Nepal, where a plane crashed on Sunday with 22 people on board, the army announced on Monday.
« Twenty-one bodies have been recovered and teams are looking for the last one, » Narayan Silwal, spokesman for the Nepalese army, told AFP the day after the twin-engine Twin Otter accident. airline Tara Air.
« Ten bodies have been lowered and efforts are being made to bring them back to Kathmandu. Rescue teams are working to bring the other bodies closer to the helicopter, » he said.
The Authority had confirmed earlier Monday that the plane had « experienced an accident » at 4,420 meters, in the Sanosware area of the rural municipality of Thasang in the district of Mustang. She did not give details of the cause.
The wreckage of a crashed twin-engine aircraft with 22 people on board is found on the side of a mountain in Mustang district on May 30, 2022 in Nepal (AFP / Bishal MAGAR)
“Analyzing the footage we received, it appears the flight did not catch fire. Everything is scattered around the site. The flight appears to have collided with a large rock on the hill,” Dev Raj Subedi said. , spokesperson for Pokhara Airport.
About 60 people are hard at work on the site, including soldiers, police, mountain guides and locals, most of whom traveled miles on foot to reach it.
– An Indian family –
In addition to the three crew members, the aircraft was carrying 19 passengers including two Germans, four Indians and ten Nepalese.
The four Indians were a couple, their daughter and son, aged 15 and 22, Indian police official Uttam Sonawane told AFP.
Map of Nepal locating Pokhara, Thasang and Jomsom (AFP/)
According to Pradeep Gauchan, a local official, the wreckage is about 3,800-4,000 meters above sea level.
Tara Air’s twin-engine Twin Otter took off from the city of Pokhara (central-western Nepal) at 9:55 a.m. (0410 GMT), the country’s second largest city, 200 km west of the capital Kathmandu, before lose radio contact.
He was going to Jomsom, a popular area for trekkers in the Himalayas, a 20-minute flight from Pokhara.
A photo shared by Nepal Army spokesman Narayan Silwal on Twitter showed plane wreckage strewn on the side of a mountain.
The registration number 9N-AET was clearly visible on what appeared to be a piece of wing.
According to the Aviation Safety Network website, the aircraft was manufactured by Canadian company De Havilland and first flew more than 40 years ago in 1979.
Families collapsed after a plane crashed in the Himalayas on May 30, 2022 at Pokhara airport, Nepal (AFP/Yunish Gurung)
Search operations had resumed on Monday morning after being interrupted on Sunday at nightfall.
Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a private domestic airline serving many remote areas of Nepal.
Nepalese civil aviation has boomed in recent years, transporting tourists, walkers and mountaineers, as well as goods, to remote and hard-to-reach places by road.
– Grim safety record –
Nepal, an impoverished country in the Himalayas, has a dismal aviation safety record due to insufficient pilot training and maintenance.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for security reasons.
The country also has some of the most dangerous airstrips in the world, located among snow-capped peaks.
Families of passengers from the crashed plane wait outside Pokhara airport on May 29, 2022 in Nepal (AFP / Yunish Gurung)
In March 2018, a plane belonging to the Bangladeshi company US-Bangla Airlines crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 51 people.
The deadliest accident dates back to 1992: 167 people were killed on board a Pakistan International Airlines flight near Kathmandu airport.
Two months earlier, a Thai Airways plane crashed in the same area, killing 113 people.
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