Bodies from air crash returned to grieving kin
KATHMANDU: Nepali hospital staff began the grim task of handing over bodies to grieving families yesterday after a plane with 72 people on board crashed, the country’s worst aviation disaster in three decades.
The Yeti Airlines flight with 68 passengers and four crew plummeted into a steep gorge, smashed into pieces and burst into flames as it approached the central city of Pokhara on Sunday.
All those on board, who included six children as well as 15 foreigners, are believed to have died.
Rescuers have been working almost around the clock extracting human remains from the 300-metre-deep gorge strewn with twisted plane seats and chunks of fuselage and wing.
Seventy bodies had been retrieved by early yesterday, police official AK Chhetri said. Another senior official said on Monday the hope of finding anyone alive was “nil”.
“We retrieved one body last night. But it was three pieces. We are not sure whether it’s three bodies or one body. It will be confirmed only after DNA test,” he said.
“The search [for] the missing two other bodies has now resumed,” Mr Chhetri said.
Drones were being used and the search had been expanded to a radius of two to three kilometres, he said.
Up to 10 bodies were transferred by army truck from Pokhara hospital to the airport ready to be airlifted back to the capital, Kathmandu.
Another three bodies were handed over to grieving families in Pokhara, with others due to follow.
The ATR 72 was flying from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a gateway for religious pilgrims and trekkers, when it crashed shortly before 11am local time on Sunday.
“I was walking when I heard a loud blast, like a bomb went off,” said witness Arun Tamu, 44, who was around 500 metres away and live-streamed video of the blazing wreckage on social media.
The cause was not yet known but a video on social media showed the twinpropeller aircraft banking suddenly and sharply to the left as it neared Pokhara airport. A loud explosion followed.
Experts told AFP it was unclear from the clip whether human error or a mechanical malfunction was to blame.
The black box from the plane, made by France-based ATR, has not yet been found.
Experts from the French accident investigation agency were due to arrive in Nepal yesterday.
According to the Press Trust of India news agency, the pilot Anju Khatiwada joined Nepal’s aviation sector after her husband was killed flying a small passenger plane in 2006.
Nepal’s aviation industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-toreach areas, as well as ferrying foreign mountain climbers. The sector has been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training.