Rescue teams have recovered 68 bodies as search efforts ended for the day after a Yeti Airlines passenger plane crashed near Pokhara, Nepal with 72 people aboard.
Authorities said the grim process of identifying the dead was under way, hours after the plane went down in the Seti River Gorge as it travelled from Kathmandu to its destination Pokhara on Sunday January 15.
“The process of identifying the bodies has begun,” Tek Prasad Rai, a spokesperson for the Nepal Police said. “The rescue operation is going on and we, along with our team, have gathered the bodies”.
As of late Sunday, no survivors had been discovered, and authorities announced that the search for the four missing people will pick up again on Monday January 16.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has provided information indicating that 53 of the passengers and the four flight attendants were Nepalis.
The foreigners on board included five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans, one Irish person, one Australian, one Argentinian and one French traveller.
The Gandaki Hospital has been tasked with post-mortem identification of the bodies. After the corpses have been identified, according to Yeti Airlines, the bodies will be transferred to the families.
“All the bodies are now in Pokhara. After identification we will transport the bodies to convenient locations for the families and handover,” Pemba Sherpa, marketing manager at Yeti Airlines, told reporters.
“We have also circulated the information to embassies in the case of foreign casualties,” he added.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. In addition to designating Monday as a public holiday to honor the deceased, the government formed a commission to look into the incident.
According Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal in a Twitter post; “I am deeply saddened by the sad and tragic accident of Yeti Airlines ANC ATR 72 which was flying from Kathmandu to Pokhara with passengers.”
“I sincerely appeal to the security personnel, all agencies of the Nepal government and the general public to start an effective rescue,” he added.
Over the years, accidents have plagued Nepal’s airline industry. 22 passengers were killed when a Tara Air plane crashed in May 2022, less than 20 minutes after takeoff from Pokhara.
A flight from Dhaka, Bangladesh crash-landed at the airport in Kathmandu in March 2018, killing 51 passengers.
Author-Roberta Appiah
