Locals view the wreckage of a passenger plane in Pokhara, Nepal, Sunday, January 15, 2023. A passenger plane with 72 people on board has crashed near Pokhara International Airport in Nepal, the Kathmandu Post reported. The plane was carrying 68 passengers and four crew members.
Ashish Puri/AP
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Ashish Puri/AP
Locals view the wreckage of a passenger plane in Pokhara, Nepal, Sunday, January 15, 2023. A passenger plane with 72 people on board has crashed near Pokhara International Airport in Nepal, the Kathmandu Post reported. The plane was carrying 68 passengers and four crew members.
Ashish Puri/AP
MUMBAI, India – First, you see an airplane tilting against a deep blue sky. Then it disappeared behind the buildings. And then you hear the crash.
this video — the moment a plane carrying 72 people crashed Sunday in central Nepal — was apparently captured by a bystander watering the plants on their balcony. It was tweeted by regional media and aviation sources.
more videos Later recorded moments showed a crater of smoke at the crash site. A picture shows a large segment of the fuselage – with the aircraft’s ID number clearly visible – dangling from the edge.
Dozens of bodies have been recovered. There is no news of any survivors.
This appears to be the deadliest plane crash in Nepal in at least five years.
This is a domestic flight of Nepal’s Yeti Airlines. The twin-engine ATR 72 took off early Sunday morning from the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, and crashed around 11am local time in Pokhara – a popular tourist town in central Nepal known as a gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a hiking route in the Himalayas.
officials To speak The passengers included 15 foreigners, two infants and four crew members.
The relatively new Prime Minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal – only in office for about three weeks – convene an emergency cabinet meeting, then went to Pokhara’s airport to direct relief operations. His government has declared Monday a day of national mourning.
This Himalayan country has a poor air safety record, and plane crashes – especially twin-engine turboprop planes like this one – are unfortunately not uncommon. Nepal is home to eight of the 14 highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest. Weather can be changeable and conditions can be dangerous.
But authorities said Sunday’s weather was fine. They are investigating the cause of this accident.
Last spring, a plane operated by Nepal’s Tara Air crashed after taking off from Pokhara, killed all 22 people on the plane
Government just inaugurated a new airport in Pokhara earlier this month and is in the process of transferring flights to the new facility.
