‘People Were Buried Under The Plane’: Eyewitness Recounts Horror Of Nepal Plane Crash
Eyewitnesses of the Nepalese passenger plane crash have said that they had a close shave as the Yeti Airlines plane, with 72 onboard, including five Indians, crashed near their settlement and a bomb-like blast was heard.
At least 68 people have died and four people are still missing as the plane crashed into a river gorge while landing at the newly-opened airport in the resort city of Pokhara on Sunday in the Himalayan nation’s deadliest aviation accident in over 30 years.
“There was a loud sound”
Deepak Sahi told ANI that they rushed to the spot as soon as they heard a loud noise. Upon arrival they saw that the passenger plane had already exploded. “There was a loud sound, so I and two-three other people ran to the site where we saw that a plane had exploded,” Shahi said.
“Some were buried under the plane”
“We took some people to the hospital. Some people were buried under the plane and we took them out. There were also some dead bodies in the gorge. We took them out,” Shahi added.
Local resident Kalpana Sunar was washing clothes in the front yard of her house on Sunday when she saw an aircraft hurtling towards her, before being jolted by a bomb-like explosion.
“Bomb-like explosion”
“The aircraft was tilted at an unusual angle and moments later, I heard a bomb-like explosion,” she was quoted as saying by The Kathmandu Post Newspaper. “Then I saw a plume of black smoke billowing from the Seti River gorge,” she added.
One of the plane’s wings hit the ground about 12 meters from the house of another local resident Geeta Sunar. “Had the aircraft fallen just a bit closer to our home, the settlements would have been destroyed,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.
Children who witnessed the incident said that they could hear passengers screaming from inside the aircraft as it plummeted from the sky spiraling.
‘There was darkness all around
Two 11-year-olds, Samir and Prajwal Pariyar initially thought that the aircraft was a toy, but when it came close, they ran away. Suddenly, there was darkness all around due to the smoke, said Samir, adding, “It looked like the aircraft’s tire would touch us as it fell.
Another eyewitness, Bainsha Bahadur BK, said that if the aircraft had come straight, it would have crash landed into the settlements and caused more damage.
Around seven or eight windows of the aircraft were still intact and we thought that the passengers might still be alive, the newspaper quoted him as saying. But the fire spread across the other half of the plane in an instant, as we watched in horror, he added.
The flight took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am on Sunday and crashed on the bank of the Seti River between the old airport and the new airport in Pokhara, minutes before landing.
