An Australian was among the 72 people on board a domestic flight that crashed in Nepal, an airport official says.
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At least 44 people were killed when the Yeti Airlines flight from capital Kathmandu went down in Pokhara on Sunday.
The weather was clear, said Jagannath Niroula, spokesman for Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority.
"Thirty bodies have been recovered and sent to hospital," Niroula said. "Another 14 bodies are still lying at the crash site and authorities are bringing in a crane to move them."
Those on the twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft included two infants and four crew members, airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said.
Passengers included five Indians, four Russians and one Irish, two South Korean, one Australian, one French and one Argentine national.
Local TV showed rescue workers scrambling around broken sections of the aircraft. Some of the ground near the crash site was scorched, with licks of flames visible.
"The plane is burning," said police official Ajay KC, adding that rescue workers were having difficulty reaching the site in a gorge between two hills near the tourist town's airport.
The craft made contact with the airport from Seti Gorge at 10.50am local time on Sunday, the aviation authority said in a statement. "Then it crashed."
"Half of the plane is on the hillside," said Arun Tamu, a local resident, who said he reached the site minutes after the plane went down. "The other half has fallen into the gorge of the Seti river."
Khum Bahadur Chhetri said he watched from the roof of his house as the flight approached.
"I saw the plane trembling, moving left and right, and then suddenly its nose dived and it went into the gorge," Chhetri said, adding that local residents took two passengers to a hospital.
The government has set up a panel to investigate the cause of the crash and it is expected to report within 45 days, the finance minister, Bishnu Paudel, told reporters.
The crash is Nepal's deadliest since March 2018, when a US-Bangla Dash 8 turboprop flight from Dhaka crashed on landing in Kathmandu, killing 51 of the 71 people on board.
At least 309 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal - home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest - where the weather can change suddenly and make for hazardous conditions.
The European Union has banned Nepali airlines from its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.
Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said on Twitter the Yeti Airlines aircraft was 15 years old and equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.
Australian Associated Press
