At least 68 killed in Nepal's worst airplane crash in 30 years

At least 68 people were killed Sunday when an aircraft went down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal, a government official said, the country’s deadliest plane crash in

more than 30 years. Seventy-two people – four crew members and 68 passengers – were on board the ATR 72 plane operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines when it crashed, Yeti

Airlines spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said. Thirty-seven were men, 25 were women, three were children and three were infants, Nepal’s civil aviation authority reported.

Search efforts were called off after dark, Army spokesman Krishna Prasad Bhandari said, and will resume Monday morning. Hundreds of first responders had been still working to

locate the remaining four individuals before then, Bhandari said. Among the dead is at least one infant, according to the Nepal’s civil aviation authority. Sunday’s

incident was the third-deadliest crash in the Himalayan nation’s history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network. The only incidents in which more people were killed

took place in July and September 1992. Those crashes involved aircraft run by Thai Airways and Pakistan International airlines and left 113 and 167 people dead, respectively.

Rescuers gather at the site of a plane crash in Pokhara. - Yunish Gurung/AFP/Getty Images Authorities said 72 people were on board when the plane went down. - Parshuram

Sharma/NTV The civil aviation authority said that 53 of the passengers and all four crew members were Nepali. Fifteen foreign nationals were on the plane as well: five

were Indian, four were Russian and two were Korean. The rest were individual citizens of Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland.