18 dead in Nepal Airlines crash

Rescuers in Nepal on Monday found the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed into the side of a snow-covered mountain and burst into flames, killing all 18 people on board, including a small child, authorities said.

Moving slowly on foot through thick snow, rescuers pulled bodies from the crash site, said police official Bam Bahadur Bhandari.

A helicopter was able to spot the wreckage on a mountainside near Machinelek, about 250 miles west of the capital, Katmandu, a day after the Nepal Airlines plane went missing.

Contact was lost with the plane on Sunday a few minutes after it made an unscheduled fuel stop in the city of Pokhara on its flight from the capital, Katmandu, to the town of Jumla, said Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal official Ram Hari Sharma.

The de Havilland Canada-manufactured Twin Otter plane had 15 passengers and three crew members on board. One of the passengers was believed to be a Danish national, while the rest on board, including a child, were Nepalese, Sharma said.

It was snowing this weekend in parts of the mountainous region, and visibility was low due to fog, officials said.

In May, another plane of the same make and model operated by state-owned Nepal Airlines crashed while attempting to land at a mountain airstrip in northern Nepal, injuring all 21 people on board.

The Associated Press