Nepalese rescuers recovered the bodies of the 22 people who were on board a passenger plane that crashed in the Himalayas, Authorities reported Tuesday that they will begin the process of identifying the victims.
“All the bodies have been found“, said Deo Chandra Lal Karn, spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, to ‘AFP’. “The process of identifying the bodies will be carried out,” he added.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Twin Otter plane operated by Nepalese airline Tara Air shortly after it took off from Pokhara in western Nepal on Sunday morning en route to Jomsom, a popular trekker destination.
The remains of the plane were found a day later, scattered at more than 4,000 meters of altitude. Ten of the bodies were airlifted by helicopter to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on Monday. The remaining twelve remained at the accident site, which was difficult to access and affected by bad weather conditions that made evacuation difficult.
Some 60 people were deployed in the rescue mission including members of the army and the police, mountain guides and locals. Most of them climbed kilometers to reach the crash site and many slept camping at high altitude.
The cause of the accident has yet to be elucidated. A Pokhara airport spokesman, Dev Raj Subedi, said on Monday that the plane had not caught fire and appeared to have collided.
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The last known location of the plane was near Ghorepani, a town located 2,874 meters above sea level, according to air authorities.
Before the wreckage was found, Pokhara airport spokesman Dav Raj Subedi told ‘AFP’ that rescue teams had changed the search area on Monday morning.
“Search operations resumed (…) There has been no improvement over time”, he indicated. Subedi said that they had followed the GPS and mobile and satellite signals to locate the remains of the ship.
The tourist destination of Jomsom
Jomsom is a popular destination for trekkers in the Himalayasabout 20 minutes by plane from Pokhara, which is 200 kilometers west of Kathmandu.
Air transport in Nepal has grown a lot in recent years, thanks to the high number of tourists, many of them mountain lovers. But this Himalayan country It has a sad balance in terms of safety due to poorly trained pilots and aircraft maintenance problems.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for security reasons. The country also has very dangerous tracks, located between snow-covered mountains. In March 2018, a plane from the Bangladeshi company US-Bangla Airlines crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 51 people.
The most dramatic accident occurred in 1992, when 167 people lost their lives when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu airport. Two months earlier, a Thai Airways plane had crashed in this same area, killing 113 people.
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