Nepali hospitals began the grim process of handing over the bodies of the air crash victims to their grieving families on Tuesday.

The Yeti Airlines flight with 68 passengers and four crew plummeted into a steep gorge, smashed into pieces and burst into flames as it approached the central city of Pokhara on Sunday.

All those on board, including six children and 15 foreigners, are believed to have died.

Rescuers have been working almost around the clock extracting human remains from the gorge strewn with twisted plane seats and chunks of fuselage and wing.

Seventy bodies had been retrieved by early Tuesday, police official AK Chhetri told AFP. Another senior official said the day before that the hope of finding anyone alive was "nil."

"We retrieved one body last night. But it was three pieces. We are not sure whether it's three bodies or one body. It will be confirmed only after a DNA test," Chhetri said.

Drones were being used and the search for the two remaining bodies had been expanded to a radius of 2 to 3 kilometers (1 to 2 miles), he added.

The black boxes from the plane, made by France-based ATR, were handed over to authorities on Monday, said Bikram Raj Gautam, chief of Pokhara International Airport.

Hospital workers in blue and white protective suits and masks loaded bodies wrapped in plastic onto army trucks on Tuesday as distraught relatives wept and hugged outside.

The trucks then left for the airport, where the bodies would be airlifted back to the capital Kathmandu.

The body of one victim, journalist Tribhuban Poudel, was laid out on a bier covered with orange marigold flowers outside his home as mourners filed past offering prayers in the winter sunshine.

"Eight bodies have been handed to families. We will hand over another 14 bodies after completing autopsies here in Pokhara. Forty-eight bodies have been sent to Kathmandu for DNA tests and handover to the families," Chhetri said.

Flyer filmed crash

Airplane passenger Sonu Jaiswal's 90-second smartphone video began with the aircraft approaching the runway by flying over buildings and green fields over Pokhara, a Nepalese city on the foothills of the Himalayas.

Everything looked normal as Jaiswal's livestream on Facebook shifted from the picturesque views seen from the plane's window to fellow passengers who were laughing. Finally, Jaiswal, wearing a yellow sweater, turned the camera to himself and smiled.

Then it happened. The plane suddenly appeared to veer toward its left as Jaiswal's smartphone briefly captured the cries of passengers. Within seconds the footage turned shaky and recorded the screeching sound of an engine. Toward the end of the video, huge flames and smoke took over the frame.

Co-pilot met same fate as husband

The Yeti Airlines flight was co-piloted by Anju Khatiwada, who had pursued years of pilot training in the United States after her husband died in a 2006 plane crash while flying for the same airlines. Her colleagues described her as a skilled pilot who was very motivated.

The deaths of Khatiwada, 44, and Jaiswal, 25, are part of a deadly pattern in Nepal, a country that has seen a series of air crashes over the years, in part due to difficult terrain, bad weather and aging fleets.