A passenger plane carrying 72 people has crash landed near Pokhara International Airport in Nepal.
The plane was carrying a total of 68 passengers and four crew members, the daily Kathmandu Post newspaper reported, quoting a spokesperson for Yeti Airlines.
The newspaper added that rescue operations are underway.
Images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke billowing from the crash site.
Chief District Officer Tek Bahadur KC initially told local news that "around 30 bodies have been recovered", a grim tally updated to 68 later today - making it the most deadly plane crash in three decades.
The chances of finding survivors were "minimal", he said.
Initial unconfirmed reports say there were a total of 15 foreign nationals on board - five Indians, four Russians, one Irish, one Australian, one French, one Argentine and two South Koreans, the Kathmandu Post reported.
Three of the passengers were infants, three were children and the remaining 62 were adults.
Fifty-three Nepalis are said to have been killed, the Post said.
At the crash site, rescuers used ropes to pull out bodies from the wreckage, parts of which were hanging over the edge of the gorge. Some bodies, burned beyond recognition, were carried by firefighters to hospitals, where grief-stricken relatives had assembled.
It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to crash.
A witness to the crash said he saw the aircraft spinning violently in the air after it began to attempt a landing, watching from the terrace of his house. Gaurav Gurung said the plane fell nose-first towards its left and then crashed into the gorge.
“The plane caught fire after the crash. There was smoke everywhere,” Gurung said.
The aviation authority said the aircraft last made contact with the airport from near Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. before crashing.
Nepal army spokesman Krishna Bhandari said: “We expect the death toll to rise. The plane was torn to pieces."
But later, officials hinted that, miraculously, there may have been survivors in the crash debris.
"We have recovered 29 bodies so far and (we) have also sent some survivors to the hospital for treatment," Gurudatta Dhakal, assistant chief official in Kaski district, told AFP.
According to preliminary local reports, the plane crashed as it was coming in to land at Pokhara Airport at around 11.10am local time (05.25am).
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said the plane was flying from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara in central Nepal, and urged security personnel and the general public to help with the rescue efforts.
Mr Dahal also called for an emergency meeting of his cabinet.
Nepal has declared a national day of mourning tomorrow for the victims of the crash.
The airport has been shut down and a rescue operation is currently underway.
The type of plane involved, the ATR 72, has been used by several airlines around the world for short regional flights.
Introduced in the late 1980s by a French and Italian partnership, the aircraft model has been involved in several deadly accidents over the years. In 2018, an ATR 72 operated by Iran’s Aseman Airlines crashed in a foggy, mountainous region, killing all 65 aboard.
ATR identified the plane involved in Sunday’s crash as an ATR 72-500 in a tweet. According to plane tracking data from flightradar24.com, the aircraft was 15 years old and “equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.”
It was previously flown by India’s Kingfisher Airlines and Thailand’s Nok Air before Yeti took it over in 2019, according to records on Airfleets.net.
Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR72-500 planes, company spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula said.
Horrifying images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke billowing from the crash site as rescue workers and crowds of people gathered around the wreckage of the aircraft.
In another clip, people are seen going about their daily lives in a Nepalese village as the circling plane approaches in the distance.
The pilot turns the aircraft so the wing is pointing downwards as it careens dangerously close to the earth.
As the footage ends, the person recording points the phone down as a massive explosion rings out.
In May last year, a passenger plane carrying 22 people crashed into the mountains of Nepal just minutes after taking off.
The small aircraft operated by a private airline was carrying 19 passengers and three crew members and disappeared in cloudy weather, as it flew over a remote mountain range in Nepal.
In 2018, a US-Bangla passenger plane from Bangladesh crashed on landing in Kathmandu, killing 49 of the 71 people on board.
Nepal, which contains eight of the world's 14 tallest mountains, has been branded one of the most difficult places to fly in the world.
The country's "hostile topography" is a part of the "huge challenges" pilots there face.
The stunning mountainous regions make the country an attractive draw for trekkers, but the rugged landscape makes it difficult to navigate from the air, experts told CNN in May.
During bad weather, it becomes even more difficult, an issue compounded by the need to use smaller aircraft to reach more remote areas.
Pokhara, located 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Kathmandu, is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular hiking trail in the Himalayas.
Pokhara International Airport began operations only two weeks ago. It was built with Chinese construction and financial support. The Chinese ambassador to Nepal, Chen Song, said in a tweet he was “very shocked” to learn of the accident.
“At this difficult time, our thoughts are with Nepali people. I would like to express my deep condolences to the victims, and sincere sympathies to the bereaved families,” he wrote.
Sunday’s crash is Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it plowed into a hill as it tried to land in Kathmandu.
According to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety database, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946.
