Sunday, January 15, 2023

At least 68 killed in Nepal’s worst airplane crash in 30 years

Kathmandu: At least 68 people were killed Sunday when an aircraft went down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal, a government official said, the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.

Seventy-two people – four crew members and 68 passengers – were on board the ATR-72 plane operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines when it crashed, Yeti Airlines spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said. Thirty-seven were men, 25 were women, three were children and three were infants, Nepal’s civil aviation authority reported.

First responders were still working to locate the last eight passengers, but they were “losing hope” of finding them alive, Fanindra Mani Pokharel, the joint secretary of Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs, told CNN. A local official had previously expressed hope that some survivors might be found.

Among the dead is at least one infant, according to the Nepal’s civil aviation authority.

Sunday’s incident was the third-deadliest crash in Himalayan nation’s history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network. The only incidents in which more people were killed took place in July and September 1992. Those crashes involved aircraft run by Thai Airways and Pakistan International airlines and left 113 and 167 people dead, respectively.

The civil aviation authority said that 53 of the passengers and all four crew members were Nepali. Fifteen foreign nationals were on the plane as well: five were Indian, four were Russian and two were Korean. The rest were individual citizens of Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland.

The aircraft had been flying from the capital of Kathmandu to Pokhara, the country’s second-most populous city, the country’s state media The Rising Nepal reported. Pokahara is located some 129 kilometers (80 miles) west of Kathmandu.

The plane was last in contact with Pokhara airport at about 10:50 a.m. local time, about 18 minutes after takeoff. It then went down in the nearby Seti River Gorge. First responders from the Nepal Army and various police departments have been deployed to the crash site and are carrying out a rescue operation, the civil aviation authorities said in a statement.

15/01/23 Asha Thapa and Kathleen Magramo/CNN

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

0 comments:

Post a Comment