Crashed plane found in Cambodia, no survivors

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

PHNOM PENH, June 27 (Reuters) Searchers found the wreckage of a plane carrying 22 people, including 13 Koreans and three Czechs, high on a jungle-clad Cambodian mountain today but there were no survivors.

''According to the reports I have received from the ground, all 22 on the plane are dead. Nobody survived,'' Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said. ''We are going to carry the bodies out of the area.'' After two days of ground and air searches hampered by bad weather, helicopter crews spotted the wreckage of the Antonov AN-24 turboprop in a range called Phnom Damrei, or the Elephant Mountains, 150 km southwest of Phnom Penh.

''We have located the crash site. It's high on the mountain,'' pilot Tep Sitha told Reuters by mobile telephone from the air above the coastal province of Kampot.

Civil aviation safety chief Keo Sivorn described the 44-seater plane as ''sitting on the edge of the peak'', but declined to comment on speculation its Russian pilot had deviated from his flight path to avoid bad weather and hit the mountain.

''We're 100 percent sure that the wreckage is that of the missing plane, but how it crashed will remain unknown until the black box has been analysed,'' he said.

The plane, operated by Phnom Penh-based carrier PMT Air, vanished from radar screens on Monday during a flight from Siem Reap, home to the famed 800-year-old Angkor Wat temple complex, to the coastal resort of Sihanoukville.

Also on board were two Cambodian co-pilots, a Cambodian engineer and two flight attendants.

The search, which Prime Minister Hun Sen supervised himself, was hampered by heavy rains which made the heavily forested hills virtually impassable on foot and low-lying clouds which prevented helicopter crews from seeing the treetops.

Hun Sen offered a 5,000 dollars reward to anyone who found the wreckage.

Air services between Siem Reap 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 LPB RAI0925

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