A mobile phone recovered from the wreckage of the Yeti Airlines plane that crashed in Nepal on Sunday, has apparently captured the final disturbing moments of the doomed flight, reports bdnews24.com citing NDTV.
The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft from Kathmandu carrying 72 people -- crashed shortly before landing in Pokhara, a major tourist destination in the Himalayan nation. At least 68 of those on board are dead.
The video, which circulated on social media, opens with shots of passengers sitting inside the plane and the city is below seen through the window as the plane circles before landing.
There is a sudden explosion and the screen goes topsy-turvy. The final few seconds show a fire outside the window and the sounds of passengers’ screams.
NDTV said it could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.
Another video from the ground captured the flight's progress during landing. The plane suddenly tilted to the left, and turned upside down and reports say it then burst into flame.
There were five Indian passengers on board, all of whom were from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. One of them, Sonu Jaiswal, was apparently streaming on Facebook Live shortly before the flight crashed. He is among the dead. The same video was found on his Facebook account, which is unverified.
Abhishek Pratap Shah, a former MP of Nepal and central committee member of the Nepali Congress, who sent the video footage to NDTV said that he received the footage from a friend and it was recovered from the wreckage.
"It was sent by one of my friends who received it from police personnel. It is a real record. It is today's video as the flight was about to land," Mr Shah told NDTV in an exclusive interview.
Rescue work is expected to continue tomorrow. Rescue workers have recovered the plane's black box, which is expected to shed light on the reasons for the crash. Pokhara is only a 25-minute flight from Kathmandu, the capital of the Himalayan nation.