Plane catches fire in Kathmandu, reported 19 dead

Nineteen people were killed when fire the plane which had just taken off from Kathmandu airport, said in a statement the Nepalese authorities. "A bird hit the plane during takeoff, and that made it difficult to control. That is one of the causes of the accident.'ve Found the dismembered bird in three parts," he told the airport authorities in Kathmandu, Chandra Lal Suman Ratish. "We need an investigation to know whether proper procedure was followed after the impact with the bird. We have recovered the black box and we are investigating," he added. The victims are seven Britons, five Chinese and seven Nepalis, three of whom were members of the crew, an official told Efe the airline Sita Air, which owned the wrecked machine. According to a statement from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the apparatus en route from Kathmandu to Lukla, the town that is a common point of departure for tourism and mountaineering in the region of Everest, the highest mountain in the world. The plane, a model of Sita Air Dornier, caught fire just a minute after takeoff maneuver, around 0615 am local time (00.30 GMT). According to witnesses and the airline workers have been completely charred bodies and no survivors. These witnesses, cited by media local , ensured that the aircraft crashed about 20 yards from a settlement of shacks and beside a stream, to which members of the army moved to participate in the rescue. In Nepal there have been several air accidents in recent years, but usually not due to fire, but to shock or loss of control of equipment in mountainous areas. The last major accident took place last May, when fifteen people were killed when a device near Jomsom airport, considered one of the most dangerous in the world.