Forty-nine killed as plane crashes while coming in to land at Kathmandu
FORTY-NINE people were killed after a Bangladeshi plane crashed and burst into flames near Kathmandu airport yesterday in the worst aviation disaster to affect Nepal in nearly three decades.
Officials said there were 71 people on board the Us-bangla Airlines plane from Dhaka when it crashed just east of the runway and skidded into a nearby football field.
Rescuers cut apart the burnt wreckage of the upturned aircraft to pull people out, while other passengers were found buried under debris.
“Forty people died at the spot and nine died at two hospitals in Kathmandu,” said Manoj Neupane, a police spokesman, adding another 22 were being treated in hospital. Some of them were in a critical condition.
The cause of the crash was not clear, but a statement from airport authorities said the plane was “out of control” as it came in to land. Eyewitnesses said the Canadian-made Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop crashed as it made a second approach towards the airport, shuddering violently as it lost height before hitting the ground and bursting into flames.
Relatives searched for the names of their loved ones on a list of casualties. Kamrul Islam, an airline spokesman, said 33 of the passengers were Nepali, 32 were Bangladeshi, one was Chinese and one was from the Maldives.
Nepal has a poor safety record and airlines based there are banned from EU airspace. The accident is the deadliest since September 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it crashed as it approached Kathmandu.