Nepal’s tourism minister among 7 dead in chopper crash

“The respected minister’s body has been identified,” Ram Krishna Subedi, the spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs, said in a press conference.

Subedi said two army helicopters had been dispatched to bring the bodies back to the capital Kathmandu.

It is unclear why the helicopter crashed.

A search and rescue team was deployed to the area after locals alerted authorities to flames and smoke rising from a hillside.

“The helicopter is in pieces, and scattered all over,” said Suraj Bhattarai, a witness who saw the debris.

The bodies of the others killed in the crash have not yet been identified.

The minister was on a trip to scope out a possible location for a new airport in the region.

It is just the latest aviation accident to plague Nepal, an impoverished Himalayan nation with a poor air safety record.

Nepal has some of the world’s most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge for even accomplished pilots.

The country has a booming private helicopter industry, flying tourists and goods to remote corners of the Himalayan nation where road access is limited or non-existent.

In September last year, six people including a Japanese tourist was killed when a helicopter crashed.

A US-Bangla Airways plane crashed near the capital’s airport in March, killing 51 people.

Nepal-based airlines are banned from flying in European Union airspace.

Its poor air safety record is largely blamed on inadequate maintenance and sub-standard management.