The search and rescue team  has recovered 22 people from the wreckage of Tara airlines plane that crashed at an altitude of 4100 meters on Sunday, officials said. 

Nepal Army spoksperson Narayan Silwal said last body and black box of Twin Otter was recovered on Tuesday morning.

On Monday evening, Deo Chandra Lal Karn, spokesperson of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, said that the  search team has also spotted the last body– also suspected dead—  but was yet to be recovered from crash site  at Sanosware of  Thasang Rural Municipality in remote  Mustang.

“ The search and rescue teams have been working to reach the last remaining body,” Karn told Everest Chronicle. Ten bodies have already been brought to Kathmandu by a helicopter.  

The Tara Air Twin Otter 9N-AET was flying to Jomsom from Pokhara with three crew members and 19 passengers  when it lost contact with the air traffic at around 10:7 am on Sunday, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.  The passenger plane was carrying 19 passengers, 13 Nepali citizens, four Indian and two German nationals, Tara Airlines said in a statement. The deceased among others include seven members of a single Nepali family, according to media reports.

Narendra Shahi, a mountaineer  who was part of Nepal Army search and rescue team, said that the rescue was taking longer due to difficult terrain. 

“Bodies were scattered here and there in steep hills, and it was very hard to retrieve due to dangerous terrain,” he told Everest Chronicle. 

The exact cause of the crash remains unknown. The government has formed a team to study the real cause of the crash.  

The search and rescue work was delayed due to low visibility caused by foggy weather in the area which has been receiving intermittent rainfall the past few days, rescue members said. 

The Pokhara-Jomsom air route is an accident prone route as it passes through the world’s deepest gorge between Annapurna and Dhaulagiri. There have been plane crashes along the route  over the last two decades, killing dozens of passengers. 

Nepal has a poor track record on air safety. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, audited the country’s  civil aviation industry in 2017 and found that Nepal scored below the global average in  investigating accidents. Nepali airlines are restricted from flying in the airspace of the European Union over safety concerns.

According to Flightradar24, a website that tracks flights in real time around the world, the ill-fated aircraft was 43 years old.