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A aircraft carrying 68 passengers and 4 crew members crashed within the metropolis of Pokhara, Nepal, on Sunday whereas making an attempt to land. No less than 68 have been killed, based on the airline working the aircraft and the nation’s Civil Aviation Authority.
The ATR-72 aircraft, a twin-engine propeller mannequin manufactured greater than 15 years in the past, was being operated by Yeti Airways, on a roughly 30-minute flight from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara, a picturesque trip vacation spot close to the Annapurna mountains. A spokesman for Yeti Airways confirmed the information of the crash and the variety of folks on board.
Movies on social media confirmed the aircraft engulfed by flames and black plumes of smoke on the crash web site, the place emergency responders have been seen making an attempt to retrieve victims.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said in a press release that at the very least 68 folks had died within the crash. An announcement from Yeti Airways cited the identical determine.
The Nepal Military mentioned it had retrieved 66 our bodies from the positioning as of Sunday night. Rescuers had taken 29 our bodies to a hospital for identification and at the very least 33 have been nonetheless on the web site, based on Brig. Gen. Krishna Prasad Bhandari, a spokesman for the Nepal Military.
Tek Bahadur KC, the chief administrator of the district of Kaski, the place the crash passed off, mentioned rescuers needed to battle to achieve the positioning, at first due to all of the smoke, and since the aircraft had gone down right into a gorge.
He mentioned that tons of of rescuers, together with from the Nepal Police, the Nepal Military and the area people, had been mobilized to the realm. The aircraft had damaged into three massive items.
To succeed in far-flung components of the nation, many individuals in Nepal depend on small, twin-engine planes, numerous which have crashed in recent times, based on the Aviation Security Community. Poor visibility, quickly altering climate circumstances above mountainous terrain and getting older fleets are among the many hazards of flying in Nepal.
In Might final yr, a aircraft carrying 22 folks and operated by the Nepali airline Tara Air went down throughout a 20-minute flight from Pokhara to Jomsom, a vacationer vacation spot common with trekkers. There have been no survivors.
And in 2016, all 23 folks on board have been killed when one other Pokhara-Jomsom flight, additionally operated by Tara Air, crashed shortly after takeoff.
For Nepal, one of many poorest nations in South Asia, tourism is a serious supply of international trade and income, contributing at the very least 6.7 % of the nation’s gross home product. The business, which continues to be rebounding from the coronavirus pandemic, employs greater than 1,000,000 folks.
Of the 68 passengers on board Sunday’s flight, 53 have been from Nepal, 5 from India, 4 from Russia, two from South Korea and one every from Australia, Argentina, France and Eire, based on Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority. The 4 crew members have been all from Nepal.
Yeti Airways Flight 691 took off from Kathmandu at round 10:30 a.m. Sunday. It misplaced contact with the airport in Pokhara about 20 minutes later, the Civil Aviation Authority mentioned in a press release launched on Sunday.
A spokesman for the airline mentioned the aircraft had been imagined to land on the newly inaugurated Pokhara Worldwide Airport, which was constructed with a delicate mortgage of $216 million from China. It was practically there earlier than it crash-landed in a gorge close to the Seti River, he mentioned.
Jin Yu Younger contributed reporting.
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