Nepali hospital staff began the grim task of handing over bodies to grieving families on Tuesday after a plane with 72 people on board crashed, the country’s worst aviation disaster in three decades.
A Yeti Airlines flight with 68 passengers and four crew members plunged into a steep ravine, crashed and burst into flames as it approached the central city of Pokhara on Sunday.
All those on board, including six children and 15 foreigners, are believed to have died.
Nepal accident: 70 bodies taken
Rescuers have been working for almost an hour to remove human remains from the ravine strewn with twisted plane seats and pieces of fuselage and wings.
Seventy bodies had been recovered early Tuesday, police official AK Chhetri told AFP. Another senior official said the day before that the hope of finding anyone alive was “zero”.
“We picked up one body yesterday. But three pieces. We are not sure if it is three bodies or one body. It will be confirmed only after the DNA test,” said Chhetri.
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Drones were used and the search for the remaining two bodies had been expanded to a radius of two to three kilometers (one to two miles), he added.
The black box from the plane, made by France-based ATR, was handed over to authorities on Friday, said Bikram Raj Gautam, chief executive of Pokhara International Airport.
Hospital workers wearing blue and white protective suits and masks loaded bodies wrapped in plastic into army trucks on Tuesday as distraught relatives cried and hugged outside.
Also read: Nepal plane crash survivor’s hope ‘nil’
The trucks then leave for the airport, where the remains will be taken back to the capital city of Kathmandu.
The body of one victim, journalist Tribhuban Poudel, was laid on a bier covered in orange marigolds outside his home as mourners prayed at noon.
“Eight bodies have been handed over to the families. We will hand over 14 more bodies after completing the autopsy in Pokhara. Forty-eight bodies have been sent to Kathmandu for DNA testing and handed over to their families,” Chhetri said.
– Explosion –
The ATR 72 was flying from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a gateway for religious pilgrims and trekkers, when it crashed shortly before 11:00 a.m. (0515 GMT).
“I was walking when I heard a loud explosion, like a bomb going off,” said witness Arun Tamu, 44, who was about 500 meters (545 yards) away and live-streamed video of the burning rubble on social media.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, but a video on social media showed the twin-prop plane suddenly veered left and right as it approached Pokhara airport. A loud explosion followed.
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Experts told AFP it was unclear from the clip whether human error or mechanical breakdowns were to blame.
Experts from the French accident investigation agency will arrive in Nepal on Tuesday, the agency told AFP.
“We don’t know whether (the accident) was due to a technical fault or reason,” local official Tek Bahadur KC told AFP.
– ‘The sick one’-
Raj Dhungana, the uncle of one of the passengers, 23-year-old Sangita Shahi, told AFP outside a hospital in Pokhara that the whole family was “in pain”.
“God has taken a wonderful man,” he said.
According to the Press Trust of India news agency, pilot Anju Khatiwada joined Nepal’s aviation sector after her husband died flying a small passenger plane in 2006.
– Bad record –
Nepal’s aviation industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas, as well as ferrying foreign mountaineers.
The sector has been plagued by poor security due to insufficient training and maintenance.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese operators from its airspace due to security concerns.
Also Read: Nepal tightens flight rules after crash that kills 22
Nepal also has some of the toughest and most remote runways in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks with difficult approaches and changeable weather.
The deadliest aviation accident occurred in 1992, when all 167 people on board a Pakistan International Airlines jet were killed when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu.