Countless rescue personnel and bystanders gathered along a steep gorge outside a resort town in central Nepal, where a regional passenger plane crashed on Sunday, as rescuers scoured the debris on the cliff's edge and in the valley below.

A regional passenger jet carrying 72 passengers crashed into a gorge while attempting to land at a recently opened airport in the tourist town of Pokhara, according to a notice released on Twitter by the country's Civil Aviation Authority. It is the nation's worst plane crash in thirty years.

Nepal Plane Crash Video

The agency stated in a statement that four individuals remain missing. The agency said that 53 passengers were Nepalese, five were Indian, four were Russian, two were Korean, one was from Australia, one was from Argentina, one was from Ireland, and one was from France. There were four members of the crew.

It was unclear at first what caused the collision. From the terrace of his home, a witness stated that he observed the airplane rapidly spinning in the air after it attempted to land, CBS News reported.

According to Gaurav Gurung, the plane nose-dived to the left and crashed into the gorge. Bishnu Tiwari, a resident who hurried to the accident scene near the Seti River to assist in the search for corpses, reported that dense smoke and a roaring fire delayed rescue attempts.

At the accident scene, around 1.6 kilometers from Pokhara International Airport, rescuers sprayed fire hoses and lowered ropes to a smoking portion of the wreckage below.

Firefighters transported some irretrievably charred remains to hospitals where grieving relatives had gathered. Family members seemed upset at the Kathmandu airport as they were led in and occasionally engaged in heated exchanges with airport authorities while awaiting information.

The aviation authorities said the aircraft had its final touch with the airfield in Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. before crashing.

The Nepalese airline Yeti Airlines operated a twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a 27-minute journey. No survivors have yet been discovered. The firm said on Sunday that all normal flights would be suspended beginning Monday.

A frightening video captures the moment a plane lost control in midair moments before crashing in Nepal. In the footage, a low-flying ATR-72 twin-engine turboprop jet en route from Kathmandu to Pokhara can be seen lurching to the right and presumably flipping over upon impact.

The footage from a terrace included the sound of the aircraft's crash as it landed behind the building. At the collision location, an explosion and massive flames occurred, as per Mirror. Dense smoke emanated from the wreckage. According to reports, the airplane fell on a wooded area along the Seti Gandaki River.

There were likely 68 passengers and four staff members on board the airplane. Dozens of bodies were retrieved from the wreckage. The renowned tourist destination in the Himalayas is home to eight of the world's fourteen tallest mountains, including Everest. Nepal has a history of plane crashes, but this one was the deadliest in thirty years.

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Misleading Photo Goes Viral

Meanwhile, several news outlets utilized an outdated photograph of an aircraft crash scene from Kathmandu, Nepal, to report the Yeti Airlines flight disaster that occurred in Pokhara, Nepal, on January 15, 2023.

The photograph utilized by media sources originates from the debris site of a Sita Air-owned aircraft that crashed on September 28, 2012, in Kathmandu, Nepal. India Today, DNA India, and India TV were the media outlets that used the photograph to report the Pokhara plane disaster.

Immediately after takeoff, a twin-engine propeller plane carrying 19 passengers crashed outside Katmandu, Nepal, killing everyone on board. The identical photo was also published on IBTimes, with Reuters identified as the source, according to BOOM.

Using this as a hint, we conducted a keyword search in Reuters Pictures, the photo library of the worldwide news agency, and located many photographs of the 2012 tragedy.

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