A small passenger plane has crashed in mountainous western Nepal, killing all 23 people on board.
The Twin Otter aircraft, operated by Tara Air, was travelling from Pokhara to Jomsom and lost contact with the control tower shortly after taking off.
Most of those on board were Nepalis. It is not clear what caused the crash.
The plane was carrying three crew and 20 passengers, one of them Chinese and one Kuwaiti.
Analysts say Nepal’s Aviation Industry has a poor safety record.
Since 1949, the year the first aircraft landed in Nepal, there had been more than 70 different crashes involving planes and helicopters, in which more than 700 people had been killed.
Most accidents had been attributed to bad weather, inexperienced pilots and inadequate maintenance.
In 2013, the European Union banned all Nepalese airlines from flying to its territory for safety reasons.
