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Kathmandu  (RSS):  The bodies of 14 persons have been found at the site at Sansure, Thalang rural municipality-2 of Mustang district where a Tara Air plane crashed on Sunday.

The District administration Office Mustang said the security personnel and locals who reached the crash site found 13 bodies at 10.30 am.    

The administrative officer at the Office, Devendra Raj Pandey said the identity of the bodies pressed by the aircraft wreckage is being established.    

The team of army and police personnel and Sherpas who reached the crash site by helicopter and the locals who reached via the land route are retrieving the bodies and searching for the missing ones.    

A contingent of about 100 security personnel has reached close to the crash site which is at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters from the mean sea level.    

Administrative officer Pandey said sending additional security personnel and bringing the bodies back by helicopter has been difficult due to the fog cover at the crash site.    

There is a plan of bringing the bodies to Kobang via helicopter after search and rescue and the retrieved bodies are identified and a police report about this is prepared.    

A helicopter each of the Nepal Army, Fishtail Air, and Kailash Air had been mobilized for the search, said Chief District Officer, Mustang, Netra Prasad Sharma.    

    

A helicopter returned to Naurikot after transporting rescuers at the incident site when the weather was good, he said, adding that efforts were on to ferry more rescuers and collected bodies when the weather improves.    

The wreckage of the aircraft was recovered at the foot of Manapathi Mountain, around a four-hour walk from Kowang of Thasang Rural Municipality. A search effort for the plane throughout Sunday was affected by bad weather conditions.    

Yarchagumba pickers and shepherds in the area had heard a big bang probably caused by the plane crash into the mountain.    

A team of the Nepal Army from Kathmandu on Sunday reached the incident site along with the required materials for a rescue.   

 

The Twin Otter aircraft of Tara Air with 22 people including three crew members on board took off at 9:55 am from Pokhara for Jomsom and lost contact with the air control in Jomsom at 10:07 am.    

Being affected by bad weather conditions, the plane later turned through the Dhaulagiri and Manapathi Mountains towards Pokhara instead of flying to Jomsom, said, local people.    

The passengers included 12 Nepali people, four Indian, and two Germans, according to the Tara Air.    

Kathmandu — A small passenger plane operated by a private airline in Nepal went missing on Sunday with 22 people on board, including four Indians, airline officials said.

The Tara Air 9 NAET twin-engine aircraft lost contact while flying from the tourist town of Pokhara, some 200 km northwest of the capital, Kathmandu, to Jomsom, about 80 km to the northwest, they said. The aircraft, which was on a 15-minute scheduled flight, lost contact shortly after take-off at 9:55 am local time.

“The aircraft was seen over the sky of Jomsom in Mustang district and then had diverted to Mt. Dhaulagiri after which it hadn’t come into contact,” Chief District Officer Netra Prasad Sharma was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

The aircraft was hosting 4 Indians and 3 Japanese nationals. The remaining were Nepali citizens & the aircraft had 22 passengers including the crew, according to the State Television.

As per the police officials, the aircraft has been suspected to have crashed in the “Teti ” area of Lete in the mountainous Mustang district, which is the fifth-largest district of the Himalayan nation and hosts the pilgrimage of Muktinath Temple.

“Locals from Titi have called and informed us that they have heard an unusual sound as if there was some bang. We are deploying a helicopter to the area for the search operation,” Ram Kumar Dani, DSP of District Police Office, Mustang told ANI.

The Nepal government has deployed two private helicopters from Mustang and Pokhara for the search for missing aircraft. Nepal Army chopper is also being prepared to be deployed for the search, said Phadindra Mani Pokharel, spokesperson at Home Ministry told ANI over the phone.

Tara Air boasts of having the “widest domestic flights network” in Nepal. “No other airlines in Nepal flies to the remote STOL (short takeoff and landing) sectors as extensively and frequently as we do. We transport essential supplies to the hinterlands, including food grains, medicines, relief materials and operate flights for rescue purposes,” the airline website says.

The airline operates a fleet of seven STOL aircrafts, comprising of five Twin Otter (DHC 6/300) and two Dornier (DO 228) aircrafts.

Nepal, home to the world’s highest mountain, does have a record of accidents on its extensive domestic air network, with changeable weather and airstrips in difficult mountain locations.

In 2016, a Twin Otter turboprop aircraft operated by Tara Air crashed n the western district of Myagdi, leaving 23 people dead. Apart from three crew, 20 passengers, including a Chinese and one a Kuwaiti national, were on board the ill-fated flight.(ANI)