Search For Missing Victims Of The Yeti Airlines Aircraft Crash In Nepal Continues

Illustration of the ATR-72 Yeti Airlines aircraft at Pokhara International Airport. (Twitter/@FlyYeti)

JAKARTA - Nepali rescue teams are continuing their search for four people who are still missing, after the crash of the Yeti Airlines plane, the deadliest accident in the Himalayan nation in 30 years, officials said.

Rescuers have recovered the bodies of 68 of the 72 people aboard the ATR 72, which crashed in the tourist city of Pokhara minutes before landing on Sunday in clear weather.

The plane, on a scheduled flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara, the gateway to the beautiful Annapurna Mountains, was carrying 57 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans and one each from Argentina, Ireland, Australia and French.

Pokhara police official Ajay K.C said search and rescue operations, which stopped due to nightfall on Sunday, had resumed.

"We will remove five bodies from the canyon and search for the other four that are still missing," he told Reuters, as reported on January 16.

"Another 63 bodies have been sent to hospital."

Authorities said the body would be handed over to the family after identification and examination.

Rescuers are also searching for the black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - as they search for victims continues, said Jagannath Niroula, a spokesman for Nepal's civil aviation authority.

Nepal has declared a day of national mourning on Monday and set up a panel to investigate the disaster, taking steps to avoid similar incidents in the future.

As previously reported, at least 68 people died on Sunday when a domestic Yeti Airlines flight crashed at Pokhara in Nepal, the worst air crash in three decades in the small Himalayan nation.

Quoting the Aviation 24 website, the Yeti Airlines fleet that crashed was an ATR 72-500 aircraft with registration number 9N-ANC with flight number YT601 between Kathmandu and Pokhara.

The plane was flying from the capital Kathmandu to Pokhara, the country's second most populous city and gateway to the Himalayas, state media The Rising Nepal reported. Pokhara is located about 129 kilometers west of Kathmandu.

The plane last made contact with Pokhara airport at around 10.50 a.m. local time, about 18 minutes after takeoff. It then descends in the nearby Seti River Gorge. First responders from the Nepal Army and various police departments have been dispatched to the crash site and are carrying out rescue operations, the civil aviation authority said in a statement.

It is known that nearly 350 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal - home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest - where sudden changes in weather can create dangerous conditions.