A plane flying 19 people towards Mount Everest went down in flames on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital Friday, killing everyone on board including seven Britons and five Chinese, police said.
The twin-propeller Sita Air plane had just taken off from Kathmandu and was headed to the town of Lukla, gateway to the world’s highest mountain, when it plunged into the banks of a river near the city’s airport around daybreak.
Witnesses described hearing the screams of passengers and seeing flames coming from one of the plane’s wings moments before it hit the ground, while airport authorities said the pilot had reported hitting a bird shortly after take off.
“We could hear people inside the aircraft screaming, but we couldn’t throw water at the plane to put out the fire because we were scared that the engines were about to explode,” Tulasha Pokharel, a 26-year-old housewife who said she one of the first on the scene, told AFP.
Emergency workers lined up the corpses — which included seven Nepalese along with the Britons and Chinese — near the smouldering wreckage as they picked through passengers’ belongings to identify the dead.
A crowd of thousands quickly gathered around the riverbank less than a kilometre (half a mile) from the airport, with many shocked bystanders clutching prayer beads and wailing in anguish as they surveyed the devastation.
