UK investigators in Nepal to probe deadly air crash

KATHMANDU (AFP) - British experts have arrived in Nepal to investigate the plane crash that killed 19 people including seven Britons heading to the Mount Everest region for a trekking holiday, the government said on Sunday.

Nepal's aviation ministry said two staff from the Air Accident Investigation Branch had come to Kathmandu to assist local authorities looking into the accident, which also killed four Chinese, an American and seven locals.

"Two experts from the UK have arrived in Kathmandu to assist in the investigation of the crash," Mr Suresh Acharya, a senior official in the aviation ministry, told AFP. "They are here under the provision of the International Civil Aviation Convention which states that experts from the country whose citizens are dead in a crash can provide expert support for the investigation process.

"The British government expressed willingness to send them and we are ready to use their expertise." The twin-propeller Sita Air plane had just taken off on Friday from Kathmandu and was headed to the town of Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest, when it plunged into the banks of a river near the city's airport around daybreak.