Rescuers found the wreckage of the passenger plane that disappeared in Nepal on Monday, May 30, a military official said, without giving details of the 22 people, including two Germans, who were on board.
"A rescue team has located the wreckage of the plane and shared a photo. Other teams are going there to get more details," Nepal Army spokesman Narayan Silwal said. .
A photo shared by the latter on Twitter shows plane wreckage strewn on the side of a mountain.
The registration number 9N-AET is clearly visible on what appeared to be a piece of fender.
Crash site: Sanosware, Thasang-2, Mustang pic.twitter.com/OcN93N1Qyb
— NASpokesperson (@NaSpokesperson) May 30, 2022
Search operations resumed Monday morning after being interrupted at nightfall on Sunday.
The aircraft had 19 passengers - including two Germans, four Indians and ten Nepalese - as well as three crew members.
Narayan Silwal said the crash site was in an area called Sanosware in Thasang, Mustang region.
Before the discovery of the wreckage, Dev Raj Subedi, spokesman for Pokhara airport, told AFP that helicopters and soldiers on the ground had focused their search on Monday morning on a potential site.
"Search operations have resumed (...) There has been no significant improvement in the weather. Two helicopters have flown over this area but they have not yet been able to land", a- he declared.
He added that searches had tracked GPS, mobile and satellite signals to the crash site.
The twin-engine Twin Otter had taken off from the city of Pokhara (central-western Nepal) at 09:55 (04:10 GMT) before losing radio contact.
Region difficult to access
Jomsom, known as a starting point for trekkers in the Himalayas, is a 20-minute flight from Pokhara, the country's second largest city, 200 km west of the capital Kathmandu.
Rescuers explored, without success, throughout the day on Sunday this very difficult to access mountainous region in western Nepal, on foot and by helicopter.
Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a private domestic airline serving many remote areas of Nepal.
Nepalese aviation has boomed in recent years, ferrying tourists, walkers and mountaineers, as well as cargo, to remote and hard-to-reach places by road.
Nepal, a poor country in the Himalayas, has a poor aviation safety record due to insufficient pilot training and maintenance.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for security reasons.
The country also has some of the most dangerous tracks in the world, located in the middle of snow-capped peaks.
With AFP
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