All 22 people killed in Cambodia crash

PHNOM DAMREY, Cambodia — Search teams reached the site of a plane crash on a remote Cambodian mountain Wednesday and said all 22 people on board were killed.

A helicopter spotted the wreckage about 1,640 feet up Phnom Damrey — Elephant Mountain — in southern Cambodia, ending a two-day search through treacherous jungle and monsoon weather by 1,000 soldiers and police.

The Russian-made An-24 plane crashed during a storm Monday while flying to the southern coastal town of Sihanoukville. It had taken off from Siem Reap, the country's main tourist hub and site of the famed Angkor Wat temple complex.

Thirteen South Korean and three Czech tourists were on board, along with five Cambodian airline employees and the Uzbek crew chief, officials said.

"This is a tragedy no one should have to experience," Prime Minister Hun Sen said at a news conference in Kampot province, where the plane went down.

More than a dozen family members of the South Korean passengers had traveled to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, late Tuesday to await news of their relatives.

The bodies were being flown to Phnom Penh for identification, said Nhim Vanda, a vice chairman of the National Committee for Disaster Management.

Sith Sakal, head of security at Cambodia's Secretariat of Civil Aviation, said the plane's flight data recorder had been retrieved and would be sent to Russia for analysis.

At the crash site, a woman's purse and some shoes lay strewn amid the blue and white plane parts.

"I just felt greatly heartbroken to see the bodies," said Horn Ratha, a Cambodian army helicopter pilot involved in the search effort.

The plane was operated by PMT Air, a small Cambodia airline that began flights in January from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, a new route launched to spur the country's burgeoning tourism industry.

Sar Sareth, the airline's director, said Tuesday that he did not know what year the crashed plane was built, but that it was in "good condition" before taking off from Siem Reap.

Tourism Minister Thong Khon said the storm was likely to blame for the crash, rather than technical problems.

South Korean aviation authorities will hold safety inspections on PMT Air and six other foreign airlines in the coming days, said an official with the South Korean Civil Aviation Safety Authority. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

PMT Air has six roundtrip flights a week between Siem Reap and the South Korean cities of Incheon and Busan, according to the airline's Web site.

The last major air accident in Cambodia was in 1997, when a Vietnam Airlines TU-134B crashed while trying to land during a rainstorm at Phnom Penh International Airport, killing more than 60 people.