Black boxes recovered from Nepal plane crash site

Search teams recovered Monday the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of a Yeti Airlines passenger plane that crashed in a gorge in Pokhara city in central Nepal the previous day, killing at least 68 people in the country's deadliest air disaster for decades.

The bodies of four people missing since the crash are yet to be traced, however, said Ajaya K.C., Pokhara's police chief. The plane was carrying 72 people, including 15 non-Nepali and four crew members.

"The recorders have been found at the crash site and have been handed over to the Nepali Army," Bikram Gautam, Pokhara's top civil aviation official, told Kyodo News by phone.

Nepal's police and army resumed the search Monday morning after suspending the operation at nightfall Sunday.

"We are continuing the search by dropping down the gorge using ropes," the police chief said by phone.

The 300-meter-deep gorge was strewn with wreckage from the aircraft.

The police chief said all 68 bodies recovered so far from the crash site have been sent to a local hospital for postmortem and 31 of them have been identified.

The ATR 72 turboprop was flying from the capital Kathmandu to Pokhara on Sunday morning when it crashed into the Seti River gorge near Pokhara International Airport. It was headed to the airport, just inaugurated on Jan. 1.

Of the 15 non-Nepali on board flight YT691, five were Indians, four were Russians and two were South Koreans, according to Yeti Airlines spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula.

There was also one victim each from Argentina, Australia, France and Ireland. The remaining 53 passengers and four crew members were Nepali nationals.

Gautam has said the weather was good in the area at the time so could not have caused the crash, while an air traffic controller at the airport has also said the pilot of the crashed aircraft had obtained landing clearance and had not reported any technical or other issues.

The plane crash was Nepal's worst air disaster in 30 years after the 1992 crash of a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft in Bhattedanda near Kathmandu that killed all 167 on board.

Pokhara is a major tourist destination in the Himalayan nation and popular with trekking enthusiasts heading for the famed hiking trails of the Annapurna range of mountains.

In May last year, a small passenger plane operated by Yeti-subsidiary Tara Air crashed in a mountainous area shortly after taking off from Pokhara domestic airport, killing all 22 passengers and crew on board.

Yeti Airlines cancelled all of its flights scheduled for Monday after the government announced it would be a day of national mourning.

A five-member panel has been formed to investigate the crash.