Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) confirmed on Tuesday that the last body from the wreckage site of the Tara Air plane that crashed in Nepal's mountainous Mustang district on Sunday has been recovered.
The authority has also confirmed death of all 22 people on board, including four Indians.
The search operation in Nepal resumed on Tuesday morning to retrieve the last body, a day after recovring 21 bodies from the wreckage site of the turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane that crashed in the mountainous Mustang district amidst bad weather.
"The last dead body has been recovered. Arranging to bring the remaining 12 dead bodies from the crash site to Kathmandu," Nepal Army Spokesperson Brigadier General Narayan Silwal tweeted.
Advertisement
"With the recovery of one more body by the search and rescue team today (Tuesday) morning, all 22 bodies have been collected from the accident site," said Deochandra Lal Karna, spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
"Ten dead bodies of the plane crash victims have been brought to the base camp from the mountain area, where the accident took place," he said.
Tara Airlines has identified the four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy) and their children Dhanush and Ritika. The family was based in Thane city near Mumbai.
"Two bodies are still at the accident site. The bad weather condition has prevented rescue operations at the site. As soon as the weather improves the dead bodies will be brought to the base camp," he said.
Advertisement
Ten bodies have already been brought to Kathmandu on Monday and are awaiting postmortem at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, Maharajgunj.
By Monday night, rescuers had recovered 21 bodies from the crash site, said a statement issued by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
The Canadian-built plane, flying from Pokhara to the popular tourist town Jomsom in central Nepal, was carrying four Indians, two Germans and 13 Nepali passengers, besides a three-member Nepali crew.
President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba have condoled the death of crew members and passengers in the plane crash.
The government has formed a five-member commission of inquiry headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman to find out the cause of the Tara Air plane crash.
A preliminary investigation revealed that the aircraft had crashed into the mountains after it swerved to the right, instead of turning to the left due to inclement weather, CAAN Director-General Pradeep Adhikari said during a meeting of the International Committee of the Parliament on Monday.
On Monday, the CAAN in a statement said that the plane had crashed at Thasang-2 in Mustang district at the height of 14,500 feet.
The photo posted on the social media site shows the tail and one wing of the aircraft remain intact.
(With PTI Inputs)
