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At least 50 killed in Bangladeshi plane crash in Nepal

Monday, 12 March 2018 10:18 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 12 March 2018 2:12 PM ]

A Bangladeshi airliner with 71 people on board has crashed while coming in to land at the international airport in the Nepali capital Kathmandu, killing at least 50 people.

The US-Bangla Airlines plane, arriving from Dhaka, went off the runway while landing and crashed on the east side of the Tribhuvan International Airport's runway on Monday. It then caught fire.

Live footage posted on Facebook showed the towering columns of smoke rising behind the runway, where another plane stood waiting on the tarmac.

"We have recovered 50 dead bodies so far," said army spokesman Gokul Bhandari, adding that several people had been rescued from the burning wreckage of the Bombardier Q400 series aircraft while nine people were still unaccounted for.

This picture obtained from Twitter shows Nepali rescue workers around the debris of an airplane that crashed near the international airport in the capital Kathmandu on March 12, 2018. (Photo via AFP)

A Bangladeshi official also told AFP that the victims' bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the airplane and the 20 injured had been taken to hospital.

"We just pulled out dead bodies and injured from the debris," Bangladeshi government spokesman Narayan Prasad Duwadi said.

The passengers on board the plane included 33 Nepalis, 32 from Bangladesh, one from China and one from the Maldives.

This screengrab of video footage from Facebook shows smoke rising from the site of an airplane crash at the international airport in the Nepali capital Kathmandu on March 12, 2018. (Via AFP)

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.

"All of a sudden the plane shook violently and there was a loud bang," one of the survivors, Basanta Bohora, told the Kathmandu Post daily. "I was seated near a window and was able to break out of the window."

Witnesses said many of the bodies that lay on the airport tarmac were charred and covered with cloth.

Mountainous Nepal is notorious for air accidents and has a poor air safety record blamed largely on inadequate maintenance, inexperienced pilots and substandard management.

In September 2012, Nepal’s Sita Air turboprop plane carrying trekkers to Mount Everest hit a bird and crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 19 passengers on board.

In 1992, all 167 people aboard lost their lives when a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok crashed while trying to land in Kathmandu.

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