"Nobody survived," said Prime Minister Hun Sen, who traveled to this coastal town near the crash site -- located in dense forest on a remote mountain -- to oversee recovery operations.

He blamed bad weather rather than mechanical failure for Monday's accident, which was Cambodia's deadliest air crash in a decade.

"This accident was not caused by a technical problem of the plane," he said, adding though that all planes operating in the country would be inspected.

"If they are too old we will ban them from flying in our country," he said.

The chartered Russian-made AN-24, which disappeared after leaving the Angkor temple town of Siem Reap early Monday en route to the seaside resort of Sihanoukville, appeared to have hit a mountain, officials said.

It was not known if any of the people on board -- 13 South Koreans, three Czechs, a Russian pilot and five local crew -- had survived the initial impact but died in the two days it took rescuers to find the wreckage, officials said.

Only a handful of rescuers had thus far been able to reach the isolated wreckage, which was tangled in broken tree limbs and heavy brush.

"We found the crashed plane ... on top of Bokor Mountain," said Khov Khun Huor, deputy governor of Kampot province.

Military officials said later that rescuers had recovered the plane's flight data recorders, which will give crucial information as to the aircraft's last moments.

Heavy fog since Monday made air searches nearly impossible while rains turned jungle trails into muddy rivulets, hampering the more than 1,000 police, soldiers and conservation workers who scoured the remote area for the plane.

But after a break in the weather Wednesday, the wreckage was sighted by a helicopter about 50 kilometres from its destination.

The discovery came as dozens of South Koreans arrived in Cambodia to mourn relatives on the doomed flight.

Khov Khun Huor said earlier that the plane had crashed in thick forest, and that rescuers would have a difficult time getting salvage equipment to the site.

"We need to cut the trees before we can go in there to see," he said.

By late afternoon, 15 bodies had been retrieved as rescuers carefully cut through the ruined fuselage, said Nhim Vanda, head of the country's National Disaster Committee, adding that he hoped all 22 victims would be recovered by the end of the day.