by JOEL CALAMBA ESCOL, Managing Editor
MDNN WORLD – Sixty-eight passengers on board a passenger aircraft have died when it crashed in West Kathmandu, Nepal, a state media reported yesterday.
According to the report gathered by MDNN World yesterday, there were 72 passengers onboard when the said plane crashed near Pokhara City, one of the highly populated cities in Nepal.
There is no report yet on the reported four survivors as rescue and retrieval operations are still ongoing at press time.
Yeti Airlines spokesman Sudarshan Bartula told the media the plane that crashed was operated by Yeti Airlines. She also confirmed that there were 37 male passengers and 25 women passengers, three children and three infants. It was also learned that of all the 53 passengers and all four crew members were Nepali. There were five Indians, four Russians and two passengers were from Korea.
It was learned that the reported plane crash was the third deadliest crash in the Himalayan nation’s history, based on the data from the Aviation Society Network.
In September of 1992, there were two plane crashes in the Himalayan nation and it also took the lives of many people. In the first crash, there were 113 passengers who died, while the second crash had 167 people dead.
Meanwhile, search and rescue efforts were cooled off after dark and it will resume starting Monday.
The aircraft, the MDNN World learned, had been flying from Kathmandu to Pokhara, the gateway to the Himalayas, according to a report from Rising Nepal, a state media in the region.
