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KATHMANDU, Jan 18 (PTI) — A team of experts from France, which is in Nepal to help the Nepalese government in investigating the crash of a Yeti Airlines plane with 72 people on board, started its investigation and visited the accident scene in the resort city on Wednesday. Pokhara, officials said.
According to Yeti Airlines officials, the nine-member team is questioning airline staff and authorities in Pokhara for details of the ATR-72 crash that killed 71 people, including 5 Indians.
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The plane, which took off from Kathmandu at 10.30am on Sunday, plunged into the Seti River Gorge, killing all four crew members and 68 passengers on board. One person on the plane is still missing.
The Nepalese government has formed a five-member investigative committee to investigate the crash. An investigative team led by former aviation minister Nagendra Ghimire has been given 45 days to investigate the crash and submit a report.
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The ATR-72 is a twin-engine turboprop short-haul regional airliner developed in France and Italy by aircraft manufacturer ATR, a joint venture between French aerospace company Aerospatiale and Italian aviation group Aeritalia.
Meanwhile, Nepal Army teams continued their search operations in the Seti Canyon for wreckage, an army source said.
Another body was transported to Kathmandu from the crash site on Wednesday, and medical teams performed autopsies on 49 more bodies.
The Pokhara Institute of Health Sciences has handed over the bodies of 22 Nepalese nationals to their relatives and doctors completed autopsies on Tuesday.
Many of the bodies were burned or divided into parts, making them difficult to identify.
Sudarshan Bartaula, a spokesman for Yeti Airlines, said the bodies underwent autopsy and DNA testing before being handed over to their families.
As a result, the DNA identification process has led to delays in delivering the body to the family, who have been complaining about the length of the process.
According to Nepal’s civil aviation agency, 914 people have died in air crashes in the country since the first disaster was recorded in August 1955.
Sunday’s Yeti Airlines tragedy in Pokhara was Nepal’s 104th crash and third in terms of casualties.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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