Missing Tara Air's plane crashed in Sanosware, Thasang-2, Mustang

Rescuers on Monday pulled out 14 bodies from the wreckage of the Tara Airlines plane that crashed in Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district with 22 people on board, including four Indians, according to a media report. Pieces of the wreckage of the passenger plane that crashed on Sunday morning were found at 14,500ft in Sanosware, Thasang-2, Mustang district in northwestern Nepal, after nearly 20 hours since the plane went missing, the Nepal Army said on Monday.

The Nepali Army has physically located the Tara Airlines plane crash site in the country’s Mustang district, its Spokesperson Brigadier General Narayan Silwal said on Twitter.

A team led by Nepal Police inspector Raj Kumar Tamang reached the crash site by air. “Some of the bodies of the passengers are beyond recognition. Police gathering the remains,” the official said.

Authorities resumed search operations for the missing aricraft early Monday morning after they were halted due to bad weather and darkness on Sunday as the night fell. The turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane had four Indian nationals, two Germans and 13 Nepali passengers besides a three-member Nepali crew.

Officials on Sunday said the fate of 22 people on board the plane remained unclear as bad weather made it difficult to locate the aircraft that went missing in the mountainous region of the Himalayan nation minutes after taking off from the tourist city of Pokhara.

The condition of the plane belonging to Tara Air that took off at 10:15 am from Pokhara, nearly 200 kilometers east of Kathmandu, is unknown till now, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said in a statement.

The plane took off in the morning for a 20-minute flight but lost contact with the control tower five minutes before it was due to land.

“The search operation has been suspended for today because of the darkness,” police spokesperson Bishnu Kumar K.C told Reuters on Sunday. “We could not make any progress. The search will resume early tomorrow.”

The airline said the plane was carrying four Indians, two Germans and 16 Nepalis, including three crew. The four Indians were Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy) and their children Dhanush and Ritika. The family was based in Thane city near Mumbai.

The plane departed from the tourist town of Pokhara, 125 km (80 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu. It was headed for Jomsom, which is about 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Pokhara and is a popular tourist and pilgrimage site.

State-owned Nepal Television said villagers had seen an aircraft on fire at the source of the Langkukhola at the foot of the Himalayan mountain Manapathi, in a district bordering Tibet.

“Ground search teams are proceeding toward that direction,” Tara Air spokesperson Sudarshan Gartaula told Reuters, referring to the fire site. “It could be a fire by villagers or by cowherds. It could be anything.”

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) also said a team was headed to that area.