Kathmandu — Search and rescue teams retrieved two more dead bodies from the wreckage of a plane crash in Nepal on Tuesday, taking the confirmed death toll to 71.
The search continued for the last missing person in the ill-fated Yeti Airlines flight which flew from Kathmandu with 68 passengers and four crew members on board, the airline said on Tuesday evening.
The ATR-72 aircraft had been just minutes away from landing at a newly built airport on Sunday morning when it fell into the gorge of the Seti River by the tourist city of Pokhara.
Tek Bahadur KC, a local administrator, said that difficult terrain, the water level of the Seti river and bad weather was causing some delays to the search.
Meanwhile, authorities have started returning the bodies to their families.
"We have already identified 22 bodies, while the remaining bodies will be handed over to families after the identification process," Ram Lamichhane, the airline's station manager in Pokhara, told dpa.
On Tuesday, a total of 48 bodies were brought to Kathmandu for post mortems.
The crash is one of the worst in the history of Nepal, a country with a poor aviation safety record.
©2023 dpa GmbH. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
