48 on board as Pakistani plane hits mountains
Print Edition
A PLANE carrying 48 people crashed in Pakistan’s mountainous north yesterday and burst into flames. Rescue workers pulled dozens of bodies from the wreckage but officials expressed little hope of survivors.
Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK661 came down on a flight from the city of Chitral to Islamabad, the civil aviation authority said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash near the village of Saddha Batolni in Abbottabad district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The military, which was part of rescue operations, said 21 bodies had so far been retrieved from the wreckage.
“The way the plane crashed and broke into pieces, there is no chance of any survival,” Sardar Aurangzeb Nalota, a local legislator, told reporters.
Villagers were collecting body parts in shawls and on woven beds, he said, while police and rescue teams were searching with torches.
“The fuel tank is still on fire. The plane debris is scattered in the mountains and residents told me that it is completely destroyed,” Nalota said.
Ilyas Abbasi, a police official in Havelian, the nearest town, said the site was more than 4 kilometers away over hilly terrain and had to be reached on foot.
The airline said the plane was an ATR-42 turboprop aircraft, which had lost contact en route from Chitral.
Among those on board was Junaid Jamshed, a former Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim who was embroiled in a blasphemy controversy in 2014, according to the Chitral airport manager and a local police official.
The singer’s Twitter account had said he was in Chitral.
Tributes were pouring in on social media for the former lead singer of the country’s first major pop band, whose popular “Dil Dil Pakistan” became an unofficial national anthem.
Pakistan’s most recent air disasters involved helicopters, both in 2015.
In May that year a Pakistani military helicopter crashed in a remote northern valley, killing eight people.
In August, another army helicopter crashed killing 12 people, all military.
The deadliest air disaster on Pakistani soil was in 2010, when an Airbus 321 operated by private airline Airblue crashed into the hills outside Islamabad while about to land, killing all 152 on board.
The deadliest accident involving PIA came when an Airbus A300 crashed on approach to Kathmandu in 1992, killing 167 people.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
