21 bodies retrieved from plane wreckage in Nepal

KATHMANDU－Twenty-one bodies have been recovered from the site where a Nepali passenger plane with 22 people on board crashed in a remote hilly area in the country's Mustang district, a government official said on Monday.

"Twenty-one dead bodies have been recovered while one remains missing," said Netra Prasad Sharma, chief district official of Mustang.

Ten bodies have been sent to Kathmandu in a helicopter, the official added.

The Twin Otter plane went missing on Sunday morning minutes after it took off from the Nepali city of Pokhara for Jomsom in Mustang district. The Nepal Army, which is leading the search and rescue effort, found the crash site on Monday morning.

Nineteen passengers, among them 13 Nepalis, four Indians and two Germans, were aboard the plane along with three crew members, said Tara Air, the operator of the flight.

The aircraft went down during cloudy weather on Sunday and was spotted by Nepal's army earlier on Monday after search operations that were halted overnight resumed.

"There is very little chance to find survivors," said Deo Chandra Lal Karna, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

Helicopters operated by the military and private firms scoured the remote mountainous area all day on Sunday, aided by teams on foot, but called off the search when night fell, as bad weather hampered the recovery operation.

After the search resumed on Monday, the army shared on social media a photo of aircraft parts and other debris littering a sheer mountainside, including a wing with the registration number 9N-AET clearly visible.

'Collided with a big rock'

The aviation authority confirmed that the plane "met an accident" at 4,420 meters in the Sanosware area in Mustang.

"Analyzing the pictures we received, it seems that the flight did not catch fire. Everything is scattered in the site. The flight seems to have collided with a big rock on the hill," said Pokhara Airport spokesman Dev Raj Subedi.

Air accidents are not rare in Nepal as travel by air is an option when overland routes are generally not in good shape in the mountainous country, especially during the monsoon season.

Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a privately owned domestic carrier that services many remote destinations across Nepal.

It suffered its last fatal accident in 2016 on the same route when a plane with 23 on board crashed into a mountainside in Myagdi district, Agence France-Presse reported.

The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.

In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka to Kathmandu crashed on landing and caught fire, killing 51 of the 71 people on board.

That accident was Nepal's deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane died when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu airport.

Just two months earlier, a Thai Airways aircraft crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.

Agencies - Xinhua