Update: See the pictures below for the Agni Air Plane crash.
Fifteen passengers died on Monday when a plane carrying Indian pilgrims crashed near a treacherous high-altitude airport in northern Nepal, while six made a miraculous escape, police said.The Agni Air plane plunged into a hill close to Jomsom near the Annapurna mountain range, police spokesman Binod Singh.
Fifteen passengers died on Monday when a plane carrying Indian pilgrims crashed near a treacherous high-altitude airport in northern Nepal, while six made a miraculous escape, police said.The Agni Air plane plunged into a hill close to Jomsom near the Annapurna mountain range, police spokesman Binod Singh.
"The plane was about to land at Jomsom airport. It hit a muddy slope and the plane is now buried in the side of the hill," he said.
"Fifteen people have been killed. Thirteen of them were Indian tourists and the other two were Nepali pilots.
The passengers had chartered the flight to take them from the central tourist hub of Pokhara to Muktinath, a sacred place for Hindus and Buddhists at the foot of the Thorong La Himalayan mountain pass, said Rajendra Singh Bhandari, Nepal police regional spokesman.
"A Nepal army barracks was near the accident site which made the rescue of survivors easier," he added.
The crash was the second deadly air accident for Agni Air in less than two years.In August 2010 one of the private carrier's Everest-bound planes crashed in bad weather near Kathmandu, killing all 14 people on board, including four Americans, a Japanese and a British national.
