Massive Aircraft Crash in Napal Leaving Multiple people Dead

68 people were killed when an aircraft went down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal.

According to CNN reports, seventy-two people four crew members and 68 passengers -- were on board the ATR 72 plane operated by Nepal's Yeti Airlines when it crashed, Yeti Airlines spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said. Thirty-seven were men, 25 were women, three were children and three were infants, Nepal's civil aviation authority reported.

Search efforts were called off after dark, Army spokesman Krishna Prasad Bhandari said, and will resume Monday morning. Hundreds of first responders had been still working to locate the remaining four individuals before then, Bhandari said.

One infants is said to be among the dead, according to the Nepal's civil aviation authority.

The incident added to the third-deadliest crash in the Himalayan nation's history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network. The only incidents in which more people were killed took place in July and September 1992. Those crashes involved aircraft run by Thai Airways and Pakistan International airlines and left 113 and 167 people dead, respectively.

The civil aviation authority said that 53 of the passengers and all four crew members were Nepali. Fifteen foreign nationals were on the plane as well: five were Indian, four were Russian and two were Korean. The rest were individual citizens of Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland.

The plane was last in contact with Pokhara airport at about 10:50 a.m. local time, about 18 minutes after takeoff. It then went down in the nearby Seti River Gorge. First responders from the Nepal Army and various police departments have been deployed to the crash site and are carrying out a rescue operation, the civil aviation authorities said in a statement.

A five-member committee has also been formed to investigate the cause of the crash. The quintet must submit a report to the government within 45 days, according to Nepal's deputy prime minister and government spokesperson Bishnu Paudel.

Nepal's Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said he was "deeply saddened by the sad and tragic accident."

"I sincerely appeal to the security personnel, all agencies of the Nepal government and the general public to start an effective rescue," Dahal said on Twitter.

Related: California Doctors Drove Telsa off Cliff With is Family