POKHARA, Nepal: Nepali rescuers pulled 14 bodies on Monday from the mangled wreckage of a passenger plane strewn across a mountainside that went missing in the Himalayas with 22 people on board.
Air traffic control lost contact with the Twin Otter aircraft operated by Nepali carrier Tara Air shortly after taking off from Pokhara in western Nepal on Sunday morning headed for Jomsom, a popular trekking destination.
Helicopters operated by the military and private firms scoured the remote mountainous area all day Sunday, aided by teams on foot, but called off the search when night fell, as bad weather hampered the recovery operation at around 3,800-4,000 meters (12,500-13,000 feet) above sea level.
After the search resumed on Monday, the army shared on social media a photo of aircraft parts and other debris littering a sheer mountainside including a wing with the registration number 9N-AET clearly visible.
Four Indians were on board as well as two Germans, with the remainder Nepalis. There was no word on the cause of the crash.
The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that the plane “met an accident” at 14,500 feet (4,420 meters) in the Sanosware area of Thasang rural municipality in Mustang district.
“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,” authority spokesman Deo Chandra Lal Karn told AFP.
Pokhara Airport spokesman Dev Raj Subedi told AFP the rescuers had followed GPS, mobile and satellite signals to narrow down the location.
Pradeep Gauchan, a local official, said that the wreckage was at a height of around 3,800-4,000 meters (12,500-13,000 feet) above sea level.
“It is very difficult to reach there by foot. One team has been dropped close to the area by a helicopter but it is cloudy right now so flights have not been possible,” Gauchan told AFP earlier in the day.
“Helicopters are on standby waiting for the clouds to clear,” he said.
According to the Aviation Safety Network website, the aircraft was made by Canada’s de Havilland and made its first flight more than 40 years ago in 1979.
Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a privately owned domestic carrier that services many remote destinations across Nepal.
It suffered its last fatal accident in 2016 on the same route when a plane with 23 on board crashed into a mountainside in Myagdi district.
Nepal’s air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas as well as foreign trekkers and climbers.
But it has long been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training and maintenance.
The European Union has banned all Nepali airlines from its airspace over safety concerns.
The Himalayan country also has some of the world’s most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots.
The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane crash-landed near Katmandu’s notoriously difficult international airport, skidded into a football field and burst into flames.
Fifty-one people died and 20 miraculously escaped the burning wreckage but sustained serious injuries.
That accident was Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane died when it crashed on approach to Katmandu airport.
Just two months earlier a Thai Airways aircraft had crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.
Bodies pulled from wreckage of missing Nepal plane carrying 22 passengers
https://arab.news/zs35e
Bodies pulled from wreckage of missing Nepal plane carrying 22 passengers
- The plane lost contact with air traffic control soon after the take-off on Sunday
- Nepal’s air industry has recently boomed, though it has been plagued by poor safety
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
