Search teams confirmed yesterday there were no survivors from a plane that crashed in southern Cambodia with 22 people aboard, including South Korean and Czech tourists, officials said.
"This is a tragedy no one should have to experience," Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said at a news conference in Kampot Province, where the plane went down on Monday.
The Russian-made An-24 aircraft operated by PMT Air crashed during a storm while flying between Siem Reap -- site of the famed Angkor Wat temple complex -- and Sihanoukville on the southern coast. Searchers found the crash site on a remote and forested mountain early yesterday morning.
"All have died. It is confirmed," Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said.
Sith Sakal, head of security at Cambodia's Secretariat of Civil Aviation, said rescuers retrieved the plane's flight data recorder, which could hold crucial information about the conditions leading to the disaster.
He said the government will send the data recorder to Russia for analysis.
Thirteen South Korean and three Czech tourists were on board, as well as five Cambodian airline employees and a citizen of Uzbekistan, officials said.
All but one of the bodies were found inside the plane, said Tes Vorn, a Cambodian medical staffer of a humanitarian mine-clearing organization who was dropped at the crash site by a helicopter. The body of one male passenger was found outside the plane, Tes Vorn said.
The impact of the crash caused the right wing of the aircraft to break off, he said.
A Russian Embassy spokesman in Phnom Penh, Timur Zevakhin, said the plane's crew chief was Nikolay Pavlenko from Uzbekistan, not a Russian as originally reported by officials.
A helicopter spotted the crash site early yesterday morning after some 1,000 soldiers and police mounted an urgent two-day search by land and air through treacherous jungle in monsoon weather.
The plane's wreckage was high on a forested mountain northeast of Bokor Mountain in Kampot, according to Deputy Governor Khoy Khun Huor, who said he saw the crash site from a helicopter. He said the wreckage did not appear to have been on fire.
PMT Air is a small Cambodia airline that began flights in January from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, a new domestic route launched by the government to spur the country's tourism industry.
Sar Sareth, the airline's director, said on Tuesday that he did not know what year the crashed plane was built, but added that it was in "good condition" before taking off from Siem Reap on Monday.
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