A plane with 72 people on board crashed in Nepal on Sunday, a spokesperson for Yeti Airlines said, adding they did not know "if there are any survivors." At least 67 bodies have been retrieved from the wreckage.
"There are 68 passengers on board and four crew members ... rescue is on its way, we don't know at the moment if there are any survivors," Sudarshan Bartaula told AFP and reported by the Belga News Agency.
The plane crashed somewhere between the old and new Pokhara airports in central Nepal. After crashing, the plane caught fire and rescuers were reportedly still trying to put out the blaze, local official Gurudutta Dhakal said.
"Rescuers have already arrived at the scene and are trying to put out the fire," Dhakal said, adding that they were "focused on putting out the fire and rescuing the passengers first.
Among the 68 passengers on board, there were at least 15 were foreign nationals: one Australian, one French, one Argentinian, four Russians, five Indians, two South Koreans and one person from Ireland.
Nepal's airline industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods, people, trekkers and foreign mountaineers to remote areas of the country. But it has suffered from a lack of safety due to inadequate training and maintenance. The European Union has banned all Nepalese carriers from its airspace for safety reasons.
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The Himalayan country also has some of the world's most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks that make approaching them a challenge even for seasoned pilots.
Aircraft operators say Nepal lacks the infrastructure for accurate weather forecasting, especially in remote areas with rugged mountainous terrain, where fatal accidents have occurred in the past. The weather also changes rapidly in the mountains, creating even more challenging flying conditions.
