Rescuers on Tuesday recovered the last image of the wreckage of the Tara Air plane that crashed Sunday in Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district, confirming the deaths of the other 22 people on board, plus four Indians.
Nepal’s government resumed its search operation Tuesday morning for the last body, a day after rescuers pulled 21 bodies from the wreckage site of the Twin Otter 9N-AET turboprop plane that crashed in the mountainous Mustang district in bad weather.
“The last frame has been found. Arrange for the shipment of the remaining 12 bodies from the site of the destination turn in Kathmandu,” Tweeted Nepal Army spokesman Brigadier General Narayan Silwal.
“With the recovery of one more frame through the search and rescue team (Tuesday morning), the 22 bodies were recovered from the crash site,” said Deochandra Lal Karna, a spokeswoman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (NAAC).
“Ten bodies of the victims of the plane crash were taken to the base camp from the mountainous area, where the accident occurred,” he said.
It is now shown that the 22 people, 4 Indian citizens and 3 team members, died in the tragedy, he added.
Tara Airlines knew the four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy) and their children Dhanush and Ritika. The family was founded in the city of Thane, near Mumbai.
“There are still two bodies left at the crash site. Bad weather prevented rescue operations at the site. As soon as the weather improves, the corpses will be taken back to base camp,” he said.
Ten bodies have already been in Kathmandu on Monday and are awaiting an autopsy at Tribhuvan University Hospital in Maharajgunj.
On Monday night, rescuers recovered 21 bodies from the crash site, according to a statement issued by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
The Canadian-made plane, which was flying from Pokhara to the popular resort town of Jomsom in central Nepal, was carrying 4 Indian passengers, two Germans and thirteen Nepalese, plus a three-member Nepali crew.
President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba expressed their condolences for the deaths of team members and passengers in the plane crash.
The government has formed a five-member commission of inquiry headed by senior aviation engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman to uncover the cause of the Tara Air plane crash.
An initial investigation revealed that the aircraft crashed into the mountains after turning sharply to the right or left due to bad weather, RCAS Director General Pradeep Adhikari told an assembly of the International Committee of Parliament on Monday.
On Monday, CAAN said in a statement that the aircraft crashed into Thasang-2 in Mustang district at an altitude of 14,500 feet.
The photo posted on social media shows that the tail and one wing of the aircraft remained intact.
Nepal, home to 8 of the world’s 14 mountains in addition to Everest, has a record number of plane crashes.
A Sita Air flight crashed in September 2012 with an emergency landing at Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people. A plane flying from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed near Jomsom Airport on May 14, 2012, killing 15 people.