At least 68 people have died as a result of the crash of a passenger plane in Nepal, Reuters reports , citing the country's civil aviation authority. In total, there were 72 people on board, including four crew members.
Update: A spokesman for Yeti Airlines told TASS that all 72 people on board were killed. He denied reports that several people survived.
Hundreds of rescuers are combing the hillside on which the ATR 72 crashed. A fire broke out at the crash site. One of the local residents told the agency that the plane split into two parts: one of them lies on a hillside, the second fell into a gorge.
Another witness said that at least two people on board were found alive and were taken to hospital by local residents. There is no official confirmation of this information.
The Kathmandu Post writes that 64 bodies were delivered to the medical center of Pokhara. The head of the institution told reporters that the identification procedure was underway.
The plane of the Nepalese airline Yeti Airlines was flying from Kathmandu to Pokhar and crashed near the airport of this city. Among the passengers were 15 foreigners, including four Russians. The Russian ambassador to Nepal has already confirmed their deaths.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, this is the worst plane crash in Nepal in 30 years. In 1992, a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a mountain near Kathmandu, killing 167 people. A total of 350 people have died in Nepal since 2000 as a result of air crashes. In 2013, the European Union closed its airspace to Nepalese airlines, citing security concerns.