Bodies of S Korean plane crash victims to be sent home

The 13 South Koreans were killed when their Russian-made An-24 plane crashed in a mountainous jungle in southern Cambodia on Monday. Nine others were killed, including three Czech tourists, five Cambodian airline employees and an Uzbek crew chief

June 29, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- The bodies of 13 South Korean tourists killed in a Cambodian plane crash were to be sent back home on Friday, officials said.

The South Koreans were among the 22 people -- also including three Czech tourists, five Cambodian airline employees and an Uzbek crew chief -- who died when their Russian-made An-24 plane crashed in a mountainous jungle in southern Cambodia on Monday.

A plane carrying the coffins of the 13 South Koreans, including 2-year-old and 9-month-old boys, was scheduled to depart Cambodia around 11:00 p.m. (1600 GMT), said a South Korean Embassy official, who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to speak to the press.

Nhim Vanda, a vice chairman of Cambodia's National Committee for Disaster Management, on Friday said Czech families would also take home the ashes of their loved ones, who were cremated at a Buddhist pagoda in the capital Phnom Penh on Thursday.

The body of Nikolay Pavlenko, the plane's crew chief from Uzbekistan, was being stored at a morgue awaiting his relatives.

Rescue teams retrieved all bodies from the crash site on Phnom Damrey -- Elephant Mountain -- in Kampot province and flew them by helicopter to Phnom Penh late Wednesday.

The aircraft, owned by the small Cambodian airline PMT Air, crashed during a storm Monday not long before it was scheduled to land at an airport in Sihanoukville on the south coast. The plane had been flying from Siem Reap province, the home of the famed Angkor Wat temple complex.

Prime Minister Hun Sen and Tourism Minister Thong Kohn earlier said that the crash was caused by bad weather.

But South Korean news reports Thursday suggested pilot error may have caused the crash.

PMT Air began flying between Siem Reap and Sihanoukville in January -- a route launched by the government to spur tourism.

South Korean aviation safety officials plan to inspect aircraft from seven foreign airlines including PMT Air in the coming days, according to an official of the country's Civil Aviation Safety Authority who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

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