At least 68 people were killed on Sunday when a domestic flight crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, the country's Civil Aviation Authority said, in the worst air crash in three decades in the small Himalayan nation, reports Reuters.
Hundreds of rescue workers were scouring the hillside where the Yeti Airlines flight, carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu, went down.
Local TV showed rescue workers scrambling around broken sections of the aircraft. Some of the ground near the crash site was scorched, with licks of flames visible.
The crash is Nepal's deadliest since 1992, the Aviation Safety Network database showed, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside upon approach to Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said the plane was flying from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara and he urged security personnel and the general public to help with the rescue efforts.
Pokhara, located 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Kathmandu, is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular hiking trail in the Himalayas.
Images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke billowing from the crash site as rescue workers and crowds of people gathered around the wreckage of the aircraft. Nepalese soldiers were also involved in the rescue efforts at the crash site.
It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to crash.
Nepal has had a spotty air safety record.
Last year, 22 people died when a plane crashed on a mountainside in Nepal. In 2018, a US-Bangla passenger plane from Bangladesh crashed on landing in Kathmandu, killing 49 of the 71 people aboard.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
