An Australian is believed to be among 72 people who were on a domestic plane that crashed and burned on a hillside in Nepal, killing nearly everyone on board.

Phone footage purportedly shows the terrifying last moments of the Yeti Airlines craft as it flew low over a populated area in the city of Pokhara, the popular gateway to the Himalayas.

The plane can be seen passing over rooftops and then rolling sharply before it is no longer visible in the video frame.

Seconds later, a crash sound can be heard off-screen.

Tweet from @KazmiWajahat

Hundreds of rescue workers scoured the hillside where the flight, which had departed from the capital Kathmandu, went down.

Nepali authorities said 68 bodies had been recovered. There were unconfirmed reports of critically injured survivors being taken to hospital.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) said it was urgently seeking information.

The plane on Sunday made contact with Pokhara airport from Seti Gorge at 10.50am, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement.

“Then it crashed.”

“Half of the plane is on the hillside,” local resident Arun Tamu told Reuters, saying he reached the site minutes after the plane went down.

“The other half has fallen into the gorge of the Seti river.”

Khum Bahadur Chhetri, another local resident, said he watched from the roof of his house as the flight approached.

“I saw the plane trembling, moving left and right, and then suddenly it nosedived and it went into the gorge.”

The site of the plane crash overlooking a gorge in Pokhara, Nepal. Photo: Getty

Local TV footage earlier showed rescue workers scrambling around broken sections of the aircraft.

Some of the ground near the crash site was scorched, with licks of flames visible.

The weather had been clear and there was no immediate indication of what caused the crash.

Safety concerns

It was Nepal’s deadliest air crash since 1992, the Aviation Safety Network database showed, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside upon approach to Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.

Nearly 350 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal — home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest — where sudden weather changes can make for hazardous conditions.

The European Union has banned Nepali airlines from its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.

The government has set up a panel to investigate the cause of the crash and it is expected to report within 45 days, Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel told reporters.

Those on board the twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft included three infants and three children, the Civil Aviation Authority’s statement said.

Passengers included five Indians, four Russians and one Irish, two South Korean, one Australian, one French and one Argentinian citizen.

The journey to Pokhara, Nepal’s second largest city tucked under the picturesque Annapurna mountain range, from the capital Kathmandu is one of the Himalayan country’s most popular tourist routes, with many preferring a short flight instead of a six-hour-long drive through hilly roads.

The burning crash site as people rush to help. Photo: Getty

A Pokhara Airport spokesman said the aircraft crashed as it approached the airport, adding that the “plane cruised at 12,500 feet and was on a normal descent”.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said on Twitter the Yeti Airlines aircraft was 15 years old and equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.

On its website, Yeti describes itself as a leading domestic carrier.

Its fleet consists of six ATR 72-500s, including the one that crashed.

It also owns Tara Air, and the two together offer the “widest network” in Nepal, the company says.

Yeti said it had cancelled all its regular flights for Monday in “mourning for the passengers who lost their lives”.

The ATR72 of European plane maker ATR is a widely used twin engine turboprop plane manufactured by a joint venture of Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo.

“ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer,” ATR said in a statement.