Forty-nine people were killed and 22 injured when a Bangladeshi passenger plane crashed while landing at Kathmandu airport on Monday.
"Forty people died at the spot and nine died at two hospitals in Kathmandu," police spokesman Manoj Neupane said, adding that another 22 were injured.
There were 67 passengers and four crew on board the Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka. Airline spokesman Kamrul Islam said 33 of the passengers were Nepali, 32 were Bangladeshi, one was Chinese and one from the Maldives.
The plane was a Canadian-made Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop, Mahbubur Rahman of Bangladesh's civil aviation ministry told AFP. Other sources said the aircraft was 17 years old.
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.
The chief executive of US-Bangla Airlines, Imran Asif, laid blame on Kathmandu's air traffic control, saying the controller "fumbled" the landing.
"Our pilot is an instructor of this Bombardier aircraft. His flight hours are over 5,000 hours. There was a fumble from the control tower," Mr Asif said.
Air traffic tracker Flightradar24 Tweeted the last 12 minutes of the flight, from the moment the plane dropped to 11,600 feet, descended a further 7,200 feet before briefly ascending 2,200 feet and crashing at 08.33 UTC.
The plane swerved repeatedly as it prepared to land in Kathmandu, said Amanda Summers, an American working in Nepal. The crowded city sits in a valley in the Himalayan foothills.
"It was flying so low I thought it was going to run into the mountains," said Summers, who watched the crash from the terrace of her home office, not far from the airport. "All of a sudden there was a blast and then another blast."
Clouds of thick smoke could be seen rising from the plane, which was on a field at the edge of the airport.
Fire crews put out the flames quickly, perhaps within a minute, said Ms Summers.
The plane had circled the airport twice as it waited for clearance to land, Mohammed Selim, the airline's manager in Kathmandu, told Dhaka-based Somoy TV station by telephone.
Nitin Keyal was about to board a domestic flight when he saw the plane coming in.
"It was flying very low," said Mr Keyal, a medical student. "Everyone just froze looking at it. You could tell it wasn't a normal landing."
He said it landed just off the runway, broke apart and burst into flames. "For a few minutes no one could believe what was happening. It was just terrible," he said.
Most of the injured were brought to Kathmandu Medical College, the closest hospital to the airport, where relatives wept as they awaited news.
News of the crash comes just one day after a Turkish plane with 11 people on board, all women, crashed in Iran. Iranian media said the plane went down in remote mountains in the snow-capped Zagros range during bad weather, killing all passengers on board.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
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ESSENTIALS
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Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
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A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
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info-box
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Happy Tenant
Started: January 2019
Co-founders: Joe Moufarrej and Umar Rana
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Age: 46
Number of Children: Four
Hobby: Reading history books
Loves: Sports
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Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
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F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Learn more about Qasr Al Hosn
In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
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PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
Crazy Rich Asians
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeon, Gemma Chan
Four stars
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
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- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
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UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Marital status: Single
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
I Feel Pretty
Dir: Abby Kohn/Mark Silverstein
Starring: Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Emily Ratajkowski, Rory Scovel
