NEPAL: Eighteen people, including 15 foreign tourists, were killed yesterday when a light plane crashed in bad weather in western Nepal close to the popular trekking destination of Pokhara.
The dead included 13 Germans, a British national, a United States national and three Nepalese crew members, officials said.
The Canadian-built Twin Otter, belonging to private airliner Shangrila Air, went missing a few minutes before it was due to land at Pokhara airport, 225 kilometres west of Kathmandu, a civil aviation official said.
"The aircraft has crashed at a place called Krishti Nachene Chaur's Shanti Stupa" - about five kilometres from Pokhara, the official said.
The last contact between the plane and air traffic control was at 5.15 a.m. Irish time. Around that time local residents heard a huge bang, a local rescue official told state radio.
Rescuers took the badly-mutilated bodies from the crash site to Pokhara airport and from there they were flown to Kathmandu yesterday evening, the radio said.
The plane was flying from the small tourist town of Jomson to Pokhara, a destination popular with tourists for its large lake and as a starting point for treks in the Annapurna mountains.
The German tourists had arrived in Nepal on August 12th and were due to return home today, said a spokesman for their tour company, Shankar Travels.
Bad weather was thought to be responsible for the accident and Pokhara airport was closed to all other flights.
Heavy monsoon rains during the past month have caused floods across the country, while a landslide on Wednesday triggered by rains is believed to have killed up to 100 people.
"We heard that bad weather could have been the cause of the accident, but we have no way of verifying this yet," an official from the German embassy in Kathmandu said.
There are about 10 private airlines in Nepal which started up after the country opened up its aviation sector to the private sector about a decade ago.
Yesterday's crash was the second in Nepal involving a Twin Otter in a month. On July 17th a plane belonging to the private Skyline Airlines crashed killing all four people on board.
The DeHavilland Twin Otter is a highly maneuverable aircraft which can be flown slowly and in tight circles.
It is sold around the world in jungles, deserts, mountains, the Arctic, and anywhere where rugged reliability and short-take-off-and-landing capability are required.
Tourism has been hard hit in Nepal since a June 2001 massacre of the royal family and a subsequent surge in the Maoist insurgency.