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Weather hampers plane search
26/06/2007 10:12 - (SA)
Phnom Chak - Bad weather and difficult terrain were hampering the search on Tuesday for 22 people, including 13 Koreans and three Czechs, on a plane that crashed in Cambodia, civil aviation safety chief Keo Sivorn said.
Rescue teams were still looking for the presumed wreckage
of the AN-24, which disappeared on Monday after taking off from
the famed Angkor Wat temples for the coastal resort of
Sihanoukville, he said.
"You can't see each other more than 40 metres away" and the
thick clouds were obscuring vision from three helicopters
helping search for the plane, which went down in the
jungle-clad Kom Chhay mountains in the coastal province of
Kampot, he said.
"The search teams are facing lots of obstacles. Until this
morning, the rain continued to pour and the hills are very
slippery as well as densely forested," Keo Sivorn added.
Prime Minister Hun Sen offered a $5 000 reward for finding
the plane.
"Our hope of finding survivors is slim," he said before
heading to the southern coastal province of Kampot where the
plane vanished.
"I am appealing to all, including farmers, who can help us
locate the plane, and offering a reward of $5 000 in hard
cash."
Also on board were a Russian captain, two Cambodian
co-pilots, a Cambodian engineer and two flight attendants.
"We just still don't know what happened to the plane. The
pilot could have managed an emergency landing or could have hit
the mountain," Keo Sivorn said.
"We suspect bad weather might be to blame, but nothing can
be certain until we find the plane and analyse the black box."
The AN-24, operated by Phnom Penh-based carrier PMT Air,
was on a flight from the central town of Siem Reap to
Sihanoukville when it disappeared.
Air services between Siem Reap, home to the 800-year-old
Angkor Wat temple complex, and Sihanoukville reopened in
January 2007 after a prolonged hiatus during Cambodia's civil
war.
The resumption of the internal route was touted as another
sign of the former French colony's accelerating recovery from
the destruction wrought by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during their
four years in power from 1975 to 1979.
Cambodia attracted more than 1.7 million tourists last
year, most of them drawn to Angkor Wat.
- Reuters
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