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At least 68 people were killed Sunday when a plane crashed into a river gorge in Pokhara, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority announced.
The plane, a Yeti Airlines flight carrying passengers out of the capital of Kathmandu, was carrying 72 passengers in total. Four remained unaccounted for as of Sunday morning.
“Half of the plane is on the hillside,” a local resident who saw the site told Reuters. “The other half has fallen into the gorge of the Seti river.”
The crash is Nepal’s worst aircraft disaster since 1992, when a plane carrying 167 people crashed near the capital, killing all on board.
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“I saw the plane trembling, moving left and right, and then suddenly its nose dived and it went into the gorge,” another witness told the outlet.
Rescue and recovery efforts were hampered thanks to the location of the crash, with first responders struggling to operate on steep hillsides.
The plane took off from Kathmandu at 10:32 a.m. local time and checked in again at 10:50 a.m. before crashing. Its flight path typically takes 30 minutes.
The passenger list included 53 Nepalese citizens, five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, one Australian, one Argentinian, one Irish and one French, Nepalese authorities said
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First responders are working to recover the plane’s recording equipment and do not at this time know the cause of the crash.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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