49 people were killed on Monday when a Bangladeshi plane crashed and burst into flames near Kathmandu airport.
According to official reports, the plane, a US-Bangla turboprop plane, had 71 people onboard when it crashed and skidded into a nearby football field.
Rescuers immediately went to the rescue of the passengers, bringing people out from cut parts of the mangled and charred aeroplane with other passengers found buried under debris that scattered as the plane hit the ground.
“Forty people died at the spot and nine died at two hospitals in Kathmandu,” police spokesman Manoj Neupane told AFP, adding another 22 were being treated in hospital, some in a critical condition.
A survivor, Sanam Shakya, who climbed out of a window of the smouldering plane, said he didn’t realise the aircraft was in trouble until it hit the ground.
“The plane was going up down, right and left, up down… so I thought that was some air traffic only. But I came to know that the aircraft had a problem only when it forcibly landed,” the 33-year-old said from a hospital bed.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but a statement from airport authorities said the plane was “out of control” as it came in to land.
Meanwhile, the CEO of US-Bangla Airlines Imran Asif laid blame on Kathmandu’s air traffic control, saying the controller “fumbled” the landing.
“Our pilot is an instructor of this Bombardier aircraft. His flight hours are over 5,000 hours. There was a fumble from the control tower,” Asif told reporters outside the airline’s offices in Dhaka.
