At least 67 people are confirmed dead after a plane carrying 72 people crashed in Nepal on Sunday, police 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.
Those on board the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop aircraft that plummeted into a steep gorge, smashed into pieces and burst into flames in the central city of Pokhara included six children, officials said.
As light faded late Sunday and soldiers extracted bodies with ropes and stretchers out of the 300-metre-deep ravine, there was no word on the fate of the five people who were still unaccounted for.
“We are actively working to retrieve and identify the bodies as soon as possible and hand (them) over to their families,” police official AK Chhetri told AFP at the crash site, which was still smouldering and strewn with aircraft debris, including the mangled remains of wings and passenger seats.
Footage on social media, which appeared to be shot just after the crash, showed raging flames on the ground and black smoke billowing into the sky from debris strewn across the crash site.
AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage of the Nepal plane crash making rounds on social media.
Another unverified clip shared online showed a plane flying at a low altitude over a residential area banking sharply to the left, followed by a loud explosion.
A local official had earlier said that “some survivors” had been taken to hospital, but this was not confirmed by the aircraft’s operator Yeti Airlines or other officials.
Yeti spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told AFP that 15 foreigners were onboard, including five Indians, four Russians, and two South Koreans, with passenger each from Argentina, Australia, France and Ireland. The rest of the people were from Nepal.
Source: Bangkok Post, NDTV, eNCA, News24, image from Twitter: @channelstv