At least 68 dead in Yeti Airlines plane crash in Nepal
At least 68 people died Sunday when a plane crashed near the central Nepalese city of Pokhara, a government official said, in the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.
Seventy-two people – four crew members and 68 passengers – were aboard the ATR-72 plane operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines when it crashed, Yeti Airlines spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said. 37 were men, 25 women, three children and three infants, Nepal’s civil aviation authority said.
Rescuers were still working to locate the last eight passengers, but were “losing hope” of finding them alive, Fanindra Mani Pokharel, deputy secretary of Nepal’s Home Ministry, told CNN.
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Sunday’s incident is the third deadliest accident in the Himalayan nation’s history, according to Aviation Safety Network data. The only incidents in which more people died occurred in July and September 1992. Those crashes involved aircraft from Thai Airways and Pakistan International airlines and left 113 and 167 dead, respectively.
The civil aviation authority said 53 of the passengers and the four crew members were Nepalese. Fifteen foreign nationals were also on the plane: five were from India, four were Russian and two were Korean. The rest were individual citizens from Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland.
The plane had flown from the capital of Kathmandu to Pokhara, the country’s second most populous city, reported the country’s state-run media The Rising Nepal. Pokahara is about 129 kilometers (80 miles) west of Kathmandu.
The aircraft was last in contact with Pokhara airport around 10:50 a.m. local time, about 18 minutes after takeoff. It then crashed in the nearby Seti River gorge. Nepal Army rescuers and several police departments were deployed to the crash site and are carrying out a rescue operation, civil aviation authorities said in a statement.
Yeti Airlines said it would cancel all scheduled flights on Monday, Jan. 16, in mourning for the crash victims.
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