Weather hampers search for Cambodian plane

PHNOM CHAK, Cambodia, June 26 (Reuters) Bad weather and difficult terrain was hampering the search today for 22 people, including 13 Koreans and three Czechs, on a plane which crashed in Cambodia, civil aviation safety chief Keo Sivorn said.

Rescue teams were still searching for the presumed wreckage of the AN-24, which disappeared yesterday after taking off from the famed Angkor Wat temples for the coastal resort of Sihanoukville, he said.

''You can't see each other more than 40 metres away'' and the thick clouds were obscuring vision from three helicopters helping search for the plane, which went down in the jungle-clad Kom Chhay mountains in the coastal province of Kampot, he said.

''The search teams are facing lots of obstacles. Until this morning, the rain continued to pour and the hills are very slippery as well as densely forested,'' he said.

Hope of finding survivors was slim. Also on board were a Russian captain, two Cambodian co-pilots, a Cambodian engineer and two flight attendants.

''We just still don't know what happened to the plane. The pilot could have managed an emergency landing or could have hit the mountain,'' Keo Sivorn said.

''We suspect bad weather might be to blame, but nothing can be certain until we find the plane and analyse the black box.'' The AN-24, operated by Phnom Penh-based carrier PMT Air, was on a flight from the central town of Siem Reap to Sihanoukville when it disappeared.

Air services between Siem Reap, home to the 800-year-old Angkor Wat temple complex, and Sihanoukville reopened in January 2007 after a prolonged hiatus during Cambodia's civil war.

The resumption of the internal route was touted as another sign of the former French colony's accelerating recovery from the destruction wrought by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during their four years in power from 1975 to 1979.

Cambodia attracted more than 1.7 million tourists last year, most of them drawn to Angkor Wat.

REUTERS SRS KP0810