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Nepal Helicopter Crash - Wreckage Found.
Kathmandu, Sep 25 (IANS) Anxious relatives and colleagues began a new vigil in Kathmandu Monday, waiting for the arrival of their kin's bodies after civil aviation authorities confirmed the wreck of the missing helicopter had been found and none of the 24 people on board had survived.
A grief-stricken Nepal began mourning the biggest disaster in the annals of its civil aviation as an army helicopter Monday morning flew over the wreck of the MM-17 helicopter that went missing in the mountainous north Saturday morning with 24 people, most of them VIPs, and confirmed there were no survivors.
At an impromptu media briefing at the rescue room set up in the Tribhuvan International Airport after the chopper chartered from private carrier Shree Airlines by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to ferry guests to a programme at Taplejung district went missing soon after takeoff, the aviation authorities admitted they had known about the crash on Sunday. However, they had not made it public, preferring to wait for official confirmation.
After bad weather with vicious downpours and thick fog had prevented search and rescue operations during the weekend, on Sunday, an army helicopter dropped seven experienced mountaineers and searchers from the Nepal Mountaineering Association and WWF near Gunasha, the tiny village in Taplejung from where the chopper was heading towards the airport in Suketar town, preparatory to returning to Kathmandu.
The team began a ground search and finally, came across the wreck 2 km southwest of Gunasha, in a hilly and forested area. The bodies were strewn around the debris and most were identifiable. The team could identify one intact body as that of Gopal Rai, Nepal's minister of state for forest and soil conservation.
After the searchers sent back details about the crash site, four helicopters were sent from Kathmandu Monday for confirmation and a last-minute rescue operation in case there were any survivors. However, continuing bad weather prevented the choppers from landing at the crash site and the confirmation had to be made by using binoculars.
'Before, we were concentrating on a search and rescue operation. Now we are focusing on bringing the bodies back to Kathmandu as soon as the weather improves,' aviation authorities said at the briefing. Besides Rai, the passengers included his wife Meena Rai, Finland's charge d'affaires in Nepal Pauli Mustonnen and deputy director of American government's aid agency USAID Margaret Alexander.
The WWF received a severe setback, losing several of their senior officers - country director in Nepal Chandra Gurung, conservation director for the UK chapter Jill Bowling, British coordinator Jennifer Headley, programme officer for the US chapter Matthew Preece and managing director of the US chapter's eastern Himalayan programme Mingma Norbu Sherpa. Nepal also lost its noted geographer and anthropologist Harka Gurung and conservationist Tirthaman Maskey, who had recently received an international award.
It was not clear immediately whether the helicopter had crashed due to bad weather or an explosion. After it lost contact Saturday and a search began, the locals said they had heard a loud explosion. Media reports said the Russian pilot Kim Klim had been flying in Nepal for several years.
BEKANNTGEGEBEN25/09/2006 @ 20:02:35 |
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