21 bodies found after Nepal air crash, search continues for 1 missing in Himalayas
- Wreckage is strewn across a steep slope at an altitude of around 14,500 feet – difficult terrain and poor weather hampered rescue
- Aboard were 2 Germans, 4 Indians and 16 Nepalis on the flight from Pokhara to Jomsom, a popular tourist and pilgrimage site
Hopes were fading in Nepal on Monday of finding any survivors among the 22 people aboard a small plane that crashed into a Himalayan mountainside a day earlier, officials said, with just two people still to be accounted for.
Two Germans, four Indians and 16 Nepalis were aboard the De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter aircraft which crashed 15 minutes after taking off from the tourist town of Pokhara, 125 km (80 miles) west of Kathmandu, on Sunday morning.
“There is very little chance to find survivors,” Deo Chandra Lal Karna, a spokesman for Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, said.
Nepali soldiers and rescue workers had retrieved 21 bodies from the wreckage, strewn across a steep slope at an altitude of around 14,500 feet.
The difficult terrain and poor weather had hampered the search parties. An image published in Nepali media showed uniformed rescue workers moving a body from the wreckage and using ropes to haul it on a stretcher up a steep, grassy ridge.
“There is very thick cloud in the area,” Netra Prasad Sharma, the most senior bureaucrat in the Mustang district, where the crash took place, he told Reuters by phone. “The search for bodies is going on.”