KATMANDU: A plane flying 19 people toward Mount Everest went down in flames on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital yesterday, killing everyone on board including seven Britons and five Chinese, police said.
The twin-propeller Sita Air plane had just taken off from Katmandu and was headed to the town of Lukla, gateway to the world’s highest mountain, when it plunged into the banks of a river near the city’s airport around daybreak.
Witnesses described hearing the screams of passengers and seeing flames coming from one of the plane’s wings moments before it hit the ground, while airport authorities said the pilot had reported hitting a bird shortly after take off.
“We could hear people inside the aircraft screaming, but we couldn’t throw water at the plane to put out the fire because we were scared that the engines were about to explode,” Tulasha Pokharel, a 26-year-old housewife who said she one of the first on the scene, said.
Emergency workers lined up the corpses — which included seven Nepalese along with the Britons and Chinese — near the smoldering wreckage as they picked through passengers’ belongings to identify the dead.
A crowd of thousands quickly gathered around the riverbank less than a kilometer (half a mile) from the airport, with many shocked bystanders clutching prayer beads and wailing in anguish as they surveyed the devastation.
“The pilots seem to have tried to land it safely on the banks of the river but unfortunately the plane caught fire,” police spokesman Binod Singh told AFP, adding that the accident occurred at around 6:30 a.m. (0045 GMT).
Although the exact cause of the crash was still unclear, the manager of Tribhuvan International Airport in Katmandu said the pilot had reported hitting a bird moments before the crash.
“Immediately after the take-off, the air traffic controllers noticed the aircraft making unusual maneuvers,” Ratish Chandra Lal Suman told reporters.
“When the traffic controller asked the pilot about it, he said the plane had struck a bird,” he added.
The crash was the sixth fatal air accident in Nepal in the last two years and it raises fresh questions about safety in the impoverished Himalayan country, home to challenging weather, treacherous landing strips and often lax safety standards.
Ninety-five lives have been lost in air accidents in the last two years, according to an AFP tally, with 15 people killed in the latest crash in May when an Agni Air plane carrying Indian pilgrims went down near northern Jomsom airport.
Six people made a miraculous escape from that accident, including a 30-year-old Danish traveler who survived with nothing more than a bruised leg.
“The record on aircraft flying hours is lax,” said Toya Dahal, an air safety specialist with the Initiative for Aviation Safety in Nepal, a lobby group promoting air safety.
“Also, the airlines don’t conduct routine maintenance,” he added, explaining that they also take risks by flying planes during poor weather conditions.
He cast doubt on the idea that a bird strike had brought down the plane. “A plane with two engines would have landed safely even after it was struck by a bird. If one engine is damaged, another engine can support the aircraft,” he said
“It looks like the pilot, after noticing technical problems, took the best possible decision to force-land the plane.”
The British group, the youngest of whom was 27 and the eldest 60, were traveling to the Khumbu area, their agency Sherpa Adventures told AFP, and they were due to go on a 16-day trek to three high passes and the Everest Base Camp.
Two of the group were brothers Vincent and Darren Kelly while another was their Nepalese tour group leader, the agency told AFP.
A British foreign office spokesman confirmed there had been seven British casualties.
The crash is the second disaster to hit mountaineers in Nepal this week at the start of the autumn climbing season, which is the peak time for visiting Nepal, which has eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains.
On Sunday, at least eight people were killed in an avalanche on Mount Mansalu in northwest Nepal. The search for three other missing climbers was abandoned on Thursday.
19 dead as plane crashes in Nepal
19 dead as plane crashes in Nepal
Zelensky meets Meloni in Italy, presses for more arms
The pair met in Cernobbio, northern Italy, on the margins of the European House-Ambrosetti forum, where Zelensky spoke on Friday and Meloni was due to speak on Saturday.
Italy has strongly supported Ukraine and has sent weapons to help it defend itself against Russian forces, while insisting that these must only be used on Ukrainian soil.
Before heading to Italy, Zelensky had on Friday pressed his case to allies meeting at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where Washington unveiled $250 million in new military aid for Ukraine.
He also met German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The gatherings came as Moscow’s forces advance in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Thursday that capturing the region was his “primary objective” in the conflict, which has dragged on for two and a half years.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who upset his European Union counterparts and Zelensky by meeting Putin in Moscow in July — is also attending the three-day Italian forum.
Zelensky rejected Orban’s calls at Cernobbio for a ceasefire, saying that Putin had never respected earlier accords.
Super Typhoon Yagi hits Vietnam after casualties in China’s Hainan
- Yagi, the world’s second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024, has already killed at least 16 people in the Philippines
- It tore through China’s southern island of Hainan where it reportedly killed two people and injured dozens
HANOI/HAIPHONG/BEIJING: Super Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, made landfall in northern Vietnam on Saturday, the meteorological agency said, after tearing through China’s southern island of Hainan where it reportedly killed two people and injured dozens.
Yagi, the world’s second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024, has already killed at least 16 people in the Philippines, having formed east of the archipelago earlier in the week.
As it hit island districts of north Vietnam around 1300 local time (0600 GMT) on Saturday, it generated winds of up to 160 kph (99 mph) near its center, having lost power from its peak of 234 kph (145 mph) in Hainan a day earlier.
Vietnam’s coastal city of Haiphong, an industrial hub with a population of 2 million that hosts factories from foreign multinationals and local carmaker VinFast, is so far among the hardest hit by the winds.
Parts of the city experienced power outages on Saturday, authorities said.
The wind smashed buildings’ glass windows and broke tree branches, according to a Reuters witness. City streets were deserted as citizens heeded authorities’ calls to stay indoors.
Earlier in Hainan, which has a population of more than 10 million, the storm knocked down trees, flooded roads and cut power to more than 800,000 homes.
AIRPORTS CLOSED
Vietnam evacuated nearly 50,000 people from coastal towns and deployed 450,000 military personnel, the government said.
It also suspended operations for several hours at four airports on Saturday, including Hanoi’s Noi Bai, the busiest in the north, canceling more than 300 flights.
High schools were also closed in 12 northern provinces, including in the capital Hanoi.
Typhoons are becoming stronger, fueled by warmer oceans, amid climate change, scientists say. Last week, Typhoon Shanshan slammed into southwestern Japan, the strongest storm to hit the country in decades.
Yagi is named after the Japanese word for goat and the constellation of Capricornus.
Without astronauts, Boeing’s Starliner returns to Earth
- NASA astronauts Wilmore and Williams to return on SpaceX vehicle in February 2025
- Boeing’s Starliner program faces $1.6 billion in cost overruns since 2016
WASHINGTON: Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed uncrewed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, capping a three-month test mission hobbled by technical issues that forced the astronauts it had flown to the International Space Station to remain there until next year.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Starliner in June, remained on the ISS as Starliner autonomously undocked at 6:04 p.m. ET (2204 GMT) on Friday, beginning a six-hour trek to Earth using maneuvering thrusters that NASA last month deemed too risky for a crew.
Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a NASA live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.
The spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere at around 11 p.m. ET at orbital speeds of roughly 17,000 miles (27,400 km) per hour. About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands Space Harbor, an arid desert in New Mexico.
Though the mission was intended to be a final test flight before NASA certifies Starliner for routine missions, the agency’s decision last month to keep astronauts off the capsule over safety concerns threw the spacecraft’s certification path into uncertainty, despite the clean return Boeing executed.
Wilmore and Williams, stocked with extra food and supplies on the ISS, will return to Earth on a SpaceX vehicle in February 2025. What was initially supposed to be an eight-day test has turned into an eight-month mission for the crew.
The ISS, a football field-sized science lab some 250 miles (402 km) in space, has seven other astronauts on board who arrived at different times on other spacecraft, including a Russian Soyuz capsule. Wilmore and Williams are expected to continue doing science experiments with their crewmates.
Five of Starliner’s 28 maneuvering thrusters failed with Wilmore and Williams on board during their approach to the ISS in June, while the same propulsion system sprang several leaks of helium, which is used to pressurize the thrusters.
Despite successfully docking on June 6, the failures set off a monthslong investigation by Boeing — with some help from NASA — that has cost the company $125 million, bringing total cost overruns on the Starliner program just above $1.6 billion since 2016, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings.
Boeing’s Starliner woes have persisted since the spacecraft failed a 2019 test trip to the ISS without a crew. Starliner did a re-do mission in 2022 and largely succeeded, though some of its thrusters malfunctioned.
The aerospace giant’s Starliner woes represent the latest struggle that call into question Boeing’s future in space, a domain it had dominated for decades until Elon Musk’s SpaceX began offering cheaper launches for satellites and astronauts and reshaped the way NASA works with private cFompanies.
Boeing will recover the Starliner capsule after its touchdown and continue its investigation into why the thrusters failed in space.
But the section that housed Starliner’s thrusters — the “service module” trunk that provides in-space maneuvering capabilities — detached from the capsule as designed just before it plunged into Earth’s atmosphere.
The service module bearing the faulty thrusters burned up in the atmosphere as planned, meaning Boeing will rely on simulated tests to figure out what went wrong with the hardware in space.
Schools closed in restive Indian state after rocket attack
- The day before, a rebel group had fired rockets in the state’s Bishnupur district
- A 78-year-old man was killed in the barrage and six people were wounded
MUMBAI: Schools were ordered shut from Saturday in the restive Indian state of Manipur after a rocket attack by insurgents killed a civilian and wounded six others.
Fighting broke out in the northeastern state more than a year ago between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community.
The conflict has simmered since then, splitting previously cohabitating communities along ethnic lines.
A local government notice said all schools in the state would be closed on Saturday, when classes are usually held, to protect the “safety of the students and teachers.”
The day before, a rebel group had fired rockets in the state’s Bishnupur district, an attack that local police attributed to “Kuki militants.”
A police statement said a 78-year-old man was killed in the barrage and six people were wounded.
Officers responding to the attack “were fired upon by suspected Kuki militants but the police team retaliated robustly and repelled the attack,” the statement said.
Local media reports said the elderly man was killed when a rocket hit the residence of the late Mairenbam Koireng Singh, a former chief minister of Manipur.
The Indian Express newspaper, citing an unnamed security source, said that the rockets appeared to be “improvised projectiles” made using “galvanized iron pipes attached to explosives.”
Friday’s attack came days after insurgents used drones to drop explosives in what police called a “significant escalation” of violence in the state.
A 31-year-old woman was killed and six people were wounded in that incident, which police described as an “unprecedented attack” by rebels.
Longstanding tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities revolve around competition for land and public jobs, with rights activists accusing local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.
North Korea sends hundreds more trash balloons south: Seoul’s military
- North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons over the past three days
SEOUL: North Korea has floated hundreds more trash-filled balloons southward, Seoul’s military said Saturday, the latest salvo in the two countries’ tit-for-tat campaigns of provocation and propaganda.
North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons over the past three days, including about 190 late Friday, around 100 of which have already landed, mainly in Seoul and northern Gyeonggi province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The bags attached to the balloons contained “mostly paper and plastic waste,” the military said, adding they posed no safety risk to the public.
North Korea has sent nearly 5,000 trash-filled balloons south since May, saying they are retaliation for propaganda balloons launched northwards by South Korean activists.
In response, Seoul has suspended a tension-reducing military deal with Pyongyang and restarted some propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said the balloon barrages were an ineffective propaganda ploy for North Korea.
Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong Un’s sister and a key regime spokesperson, “may think that trash balloons exacerbate political divisions in South Korea, but they do more to tarnish North Korea’s international image,” Easley said.
Residents of the South, however, are “annoyed by the requisite clean-up operations and worry about potential escalation,” he added.
“The most reasonable way out of the current impasse is for Pyongyang to restart diplomacy with Seoul, contingent on South Korean civic groups voluntarily abstaining from balloon launches.”
The most recent launches took place as Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Seoul for a two-day visit, meeting with South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday.
The two discussed the importance of “cooperation between Korea and Japan and also with the United States, to respond to the North Korean nuclear issue.”
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North recently announcing the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers to its southern border.
