Disasters & Accidents

Tragic end of 4 friends went live during in Nepal plane crash

New Delhi, Jan 17 (EFE).- The last moments of the plane with 72 people on board that crashed Sunday in Nepal, leaving no survivors, were broadcast live by one of its passengers who was traveling with three of his friends.

Sonu Jaiswal broadcast the final moments before the crash on his Facebook page, which soon went viral on social media, in which he is seen smiling at the camera.

The footage then focuses on the view of the Nepalese city of Pokhara from the window of the plane, before turning to the sky. The screen then gets covered with flames and smoke amid a deafening noise.

Jaiswal left for Nepal on Thursday last week along with his three friends for religious purposes – he had promised to visit Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu after his eight-month-old son spent nearly a month in intensive care, his neighbor and friend Ajit Jaiswal told the Times of India newspaper on Tuesday.

“For months, Sonu had planned the tour. He was a very religious person,” said Jaiswal, adding that the four friends had initially planned to travel to Pokhra by car, but decided to catch a flight at the last moment.

As family and neighbors try to process the tragedy, Zafar Abbas, another mutual friend of the four, told the Times of India about how he had planned to host a surprise birthday party for one of the deceased, Abhishek Kushwaha, following their return.

“For Monday, we had planned to throw a surprise birthday party for Abhishek, as he was turning 26, but we had not imagined that he would never return from Nepal,” said Abbas.

Nepalese rescue teams continued on Tuesday searching for the bodies of the last passengers missing in the plane crash, the most serious in the area in recent years.

Meanwhile, rescue teams in Nepal continued Tuesday to search for the bodies of the last few passengers that remain missing from the plane crash, the worst in recent years in the country.

Rescue teams have so far recovered the bodies of 69 people from the crash, which occurred while the aircraft was attempting to land at Pokhra airport.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, there were 68 passengers – 53 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, one Irish, one Australian, one Argentinian, two Koreans and one French – and four crew members on board.

Nepal, which houses eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Mt Everest, has a poor flight safety record and witnesses accidents frequently.

The country has been criticized and sanctioned due to the lack of safety oversight by the aviation authorities, with the European Union denying Nepalese airlines access to its airspace since 2013.

The worst air crash in Nepal in recent years occurred in March 2018, when a Bangladeshi airline AS-Bangla aircraft crashed during landing at Kathmandu International Airport, in which 51 people died. EFE

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