Plane with 14 crashes in Nepal, hope recedes for survivors (Second Lead)

KATHMANDU - Hope receded for the 14 people aboard a private airline flight as its aircraft carrying tourists crashed near Kathmandu Tuesday morning and incessant rain prevented rescue teams from reaching the site.

Rescue helicopters readied by the Nepal Army and police waited hopelessly at the Tribhuvan International Airport, unable to take off for Shikharpur village where the 19-seater aircraft flown by domestic carrier Agni Air crashed around 7.45 a.m.

Police spokesman Bigyan Raj Sharma said the flight, carrying 11 passengers and three crew members, was headed for Lukla in northern Nepal, considered the gateway to Mt Everest.

However, bad weather due to a raging monsoon prevented the aircraft from landing at the airport named after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, forcing it to head back towards Kathmandu.

On the way to the capital, it crashed in Makwanpur district, close to Kathmandu valley.

Preliminary reports said there were six foreigners among the 11 passengers. Only one of them had been identified as a 25-year-old Japanese called Ayeshi.

The other male passenger identified so far was a Nepali from Sankhuwasabha district, Pemba Sherpa.

The three-member crew included two pilots and an air hostess.

Even a police rescue team headed towards the crash site by road from Hetauda, the main town in Makwanpur, was obstructed by raging rain, fog and mud slides.

Sharma indicated the aircraft had scattered into pieces, indicating there was little hope of survivors.

This is the second major air disaster suffered by Nepal in two years.

In 2008, a domestic airline crashed in the Everest region, killing 24 people, including 12 German tourists, a Nepali minister and his wife and noted conservationists.

The crash comes at a time Nepal is celebrating the entry of a Nepali airline to Bhutan, the first international airline to start flights to the Buddhist kingdom.

It also clouds efforts to celebrate 2011 as tourism year targeted to bring in 1 million tourists.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)