There were "no survivors" from the An-32 aircraft that crashed in Arunachal Pradesh last week, the Indian Air Force (IAF) said today after searching the wreckage found earlier this week.
Search teams "did not find any survivors," the Air Force said, adding that the families of the 13 personnel on the aircraft had been informed.
"Eight members of the rescue team have reached the crash site today morning. IAF is sad to inform that there are no survivors from the crash of An 32," the Air Force tweeted.
The plane, a Soviet-designed twin engine turboprop transport aircraft, had gone missing around 1 pm on June 3 while flying from Assam's Jorhat to Mechuka, a military landing strip in Arunachal Pradesh. It was meant to be a 50-minute journey.
The wreckage was found on Tuesday in the mountains at a height of around 12,000 feet. It was apparent that the An-32 had crashed into a mountain amid bad weather and poor visibility because of clouds.
For a week, relatives of the 13 personnel were positioned at a Jorhat base camp as they waited for news. Eight were crew members and five passengers on board the Air Force plane.
On Wednesday, a team of Air Force personnel and local mountaineers scoured the site where the debris of the aircraft was found. The search operation was extremely challenging because of the terrain, incessant rain and lack of roads.
Among the crew members was Flight Lieutenant Ashish Tanwar, whose wife was the Air Traffic Controller when the plane took off from Jorhat. Sandhya Tanwar is also a Flight Lieutenant with the Indian Air Force.
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