JAKARTA - Rescue teams used drones to explore a deep ravine on Tuesday, looking for a last passenger who was still missing in a flight crash by Yeti Airlines in Nepal.
The difficult terrain around the 200-meter (650 ft) canyon and bad weather hampered rescue efforts near the tourist city of Pokhara, where Yeti Airlines' ATR 72 turboprop aircraft carrying 72 people crashed on Sunday before landing.
"The search has been halted following the arrival of the night and will resume on Wednesday," said Tek Bahadur KC, a top district official.
"There is a thick fog here now. We are sending SAR personnel using ropes to the canyon where parts of the plane crashed and caught fire," said police official at Pokhara Ajay KC before the search was halted.
Rescue teams have gathered what appears to be human body parts and sent them for DNA tests, Ajay said, but search efforts will continue until all 72 passengers and crew have been found.
"There is a small child among the passengers," he said.
The search team found 68 bodies on the day of the accident, while two bodies were found on Monday before the search was halted.
Another body was found on Tuesday afternoon, said Prakash Pokhrel, coordinator of the official rescue operation at Kathmandu airport.
Separately, an airport official said 48 bodies were taken to the capital Kathmandu on Tuesday and sent to hospital for an autopsy. Meanwhile, 22 bodies were handed over to families in Pokhara.
Television footage shows relatives crying waiting for the bodies of their loved ones outside the hospital in Pokhara.
"We have lost so many valuable lives, and this happened repeatedly in Nepal," said Ram Bahadur KC, flight captain's uncle Kamal KC.
"This is a loss that cannot be corrected", he thinned.
Meanwhile, Tulsi Kandel, who works at Tribhuvan University Education Hospital in Kathmandu, said it would take up to a week to complete the autopsy.
As previously reported, the Yeti Airlines plane carrying 72 crew members and passengers crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, the worst air accident in three decades in the small Himalayan country.
Citing the Aviation 24, 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 flew from the capital Kathmandu to Pokhara, the country's second most populous city and a gateway to the Himalayan, state media reported The Rising Nepal. Pokhara is located about 129 kilometers west of Kathmandu.
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