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KAMPOT, Cambodia : Heavy rains were hindering thousands of rescuers scouring dense forests in southern Cambodia Tuesday for a tourist plane believed to have crashed the day before.
All 22 people on the chartered aircraft -- including 13 South Koreans and three Czech nationals travelling from the Angkor temple town of Siem Reap to the seaside resort of Sihanoukville -- are feared dead, officials said.
"I hope there are some survivors, but nobody is sure," said South Korean Ambassador Shin Hyun-Suk, before joining other Korean diplomats and Cambodian officials in a meeting to try and map out how best to reach the plane.
"The rain is affecting the search," he told AFP.
The Russian-made AN-24, which disappeared from radar about 40 minutes after leaving Siem Reap airport Monday morning, is thought to have crashed in a mountainous area in Kampot province about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from its destination.
But rescue efforts have been further complicated by reports that the plane might have gone down in neighbouring Sihanoukville municipality, officials said.
Ly Thuch, deputy director of Cambodia's National Disaster Committee, said more than 1,000 people were now searching for the plane, including police, soldiers and local conservation workers.
He said Cambodia had asked the US Embassy to provide satellite photographs of the area to try and locate the crash site.
"We hope to find them soon. The (rescuers) will search deeper into the forest," he said, adding bad weather had grounded five helicopters that were scrambled for the search effort.
One group of rescuers was less than 10 kilometres (six miles) from where the crash was thought to be, he said, adding that so far they had only vague eyewitness accounts from villagers to guide them to the plane.
The crash is the first major aircraft disaster to strike Cambodia in a decade, but highlights the country's need to bolster its domestic air safety amid a rise in tourist arrivals.
The plane was operated by PMT Air, which runs flights between Phnom Penh and some provincial capitals but has had at least three accidents or in-flight emergencies in the past two years and was temporarily grounded after one incident.
Engine failure once forced a PMT plane to turn back mid-flight, while another ran off the runway as it landed because it was overloaded with passengers, officials said at the time.
PMT opened a route between Siem Reap and Sihanoukville in January, aviation officials said, in a bid to encourage more tourist traffic between the two cities.
South Korea's foreign ministry said late Monday it had identified all 13 South Koreans, according to Yonhap news agency.
"The 13 South Koreans are seen as tourists recruited by a tour agency," a ministry official said, adding two children and two teenagers were among those on board the doomed plane.
The ministry said it would soon send a six-member fact-finding mission to Cambodia.
South Koreans made up the largest percentage of 1.7 million foreign visitors to Cambodia in 2006.
Cambodia's last significant air accident occurred in 1997, when a Vietnam Airlines flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh crashed in heavy monsoon rain as it attempted to land at the capital's international airport.
Sixty-four people were killed in the crash. Only two infants, a Thai boy and a Vietnamese boy, survived.
- AFP/ir
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