No survivors have been found at the crash site in Nepal, a day after a private plane - with 22 on board, including four Indians - met with an accident in a mountainous region of the country amid bad weather. The search and rescue efforts had resumed on Monday morning, hours after a halt due to challenges faced by the teams. A team of 15 Nepali Army soldiers has been dropped near the crash site to retrieve the bodies on Monday. The crash site lies at an elevation of about 14,500 feet while the team has been dropped at 11,000 meters height, the army spokesperson said.
Earlier the country's home ministry had said that the government feared all passengers have died. "We suspect all the passengers on board the aircraft have lost their lives. Our preliminary assessment shows that no one could have survived the plane crash, but official statement is due," Phadindra Mani Pokhrel, spokesperson, told news agency ANI. The crash site was identified as Sanosware, Thasang-2, Mustang
Fourteen bodies were recovered initially from the wreckage of the Tara Air plane that crashed into a mountainside after the search and rescue efforts resumed on Monday morning. "Fourteen bodies have been recovered so far, search continues for the remaining. The weather is very bad but we were able to take a team to the crash site. No other flight has been possible," civil aviation authority spokesman Deo Chandra Lal Karn told news agency AFP.
“Some of the bodies of the passengers are beyond recognition. Police gathering the remains," Tek Raj Sitaula, a spokesman for the Tribhuvan International Airport in Nepal's capital Kathmandu, told reporters.
{{/usCountry}}“Some of the bodies of the passengers are beyond recognition. Police gathering the remains," Tek Raj Sitaula, a spokesman for the Tribhuvan International Airport in Nepal's capital Kathmandu, told reporters.
{{/usCountry}}Pieces of the wreckage of the passenger plane that crashed on Sunday morning were found at 14,500ft in Sano Sware Bhir of Thasang in Mustang district in northwestern Nepal, after nearly 20 hours since the plane went missing, the Nepal Army said.
Sudarshan Bartaula, a spokesperson of Tara Air, said: “As the bodies have been scattered over a 100-metre radius from the main impact point, the search and rescue team is collecting them." The airline issued the list of passengers which identified four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his ex wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy) and their children Dhanush and Ritika.
(With inputs from ANI, AFP, PTI)