Deepak Adhikari
KATHMANDU: At least 49 passengers were killed and 22 others wounded after a passenger aircraft of a private Ba-ngladeshi airline skidded off t-he runway and caught fire in Kathmandu Monday, police said.
Police spokesman Manoj Neupane said emergency workers recovered 40 dead bodies from the aircraft while nine others died after they were taken to hospitals in Kathmandu. Neupane said the emergency workers had called off the search at the site since all passengers had been accounted for. “But we will be able to identify the dead only tomorrow,” he said.
The US-Bangla airlines plane had arrived in Kathmandu in the afternoon from Dhaka. There were 67 passengers and four crew members aboard. According to local media reports, there were 33 Nepalese among them.
Photographs from the scene showed wreckage of the plane on a field at the edge of the airport. Smoke could be seen rising from the airport. Firef-ighters and ambulances had r-ushed towards the plane to rescue trapped passengers immediately after the incident, wh-ich took place on the eastern edge of the airport after the aircraft overshot the runway. (AA)
