Missing plane found crashed at Sanosware, Thasang-2 in Mustang

Nepal Army Spokesperson, Brigadier General Narayan Silwal announced on social media that troops on the ground in the search operations have found the site where the missing Tara Air plane has crashed. According to Silwal, the crash site is Sanosware, Thasang-2 in Mustang. Search and rescue efforts for the missing Tara Air plane began early today amid adverse weather conditions. Nepal Army, police and search teams along with locals continued the on-foot search amid adverse weather conditions in the Dhaulagiri region.

On Sunday evening all helicopters deployed in the search for the missing aircraft were called off the evening after the snowfall and bad weather in the Mustang district.

On Sunday morning, the twin-engine aircraft, flying from Pokhara to Jomsom at 9:55 am, had lost contact, after reaching the Lete area of Mustang. According to the information given by locals to the Nepal Army, the Tara Air plane could have crashed at the mouth of the Lamche river near the base of Manapathi Himal.

"The aircraft was seen over the sky of Jomsom in Mustang and then had diverted to Mt. Dhaulagiri after which it hadn't come into contact," Chief District Officer Netra Prasad Sharma had confirmed on Sunday.

A team of Nepali Army, Nepal Police, and the Armed Police Force had left for Dhaulagiri mountain as it was suspected that the plane might have gone missing between the Dhaulagiri and the Manapathi mountains.

The plane was flying in circles at a height lower than average, Bikal Bagdas of Boksekhola, a local from Thasang rural municipality-2, had informed on Sunday, He had reported seeing the airplane flying in circles two or three times some distance above the house amidst the heavy rain and fog, adding that he had not seen planes flying to Mustang at such a low altitude before this.

According to the Tribhuvan International Airport, the 'emergency location transmitter signal' was located on Sunday evening and it looked like the aircraft had hit a mountain. However, the place where the plane was suspected to have crashed is high up in the mountain far away from human settlement, a TIA source had informed.