48 killed as jet hits mountain in Pakistan

A JET carrying 48 people crashed into a mountain in Pakistan yesterday, killing everyone on board.

Junaid Jamshed, a Pakistani pop star turned Muslim cleric, was among those dead.

The Pakistan International Airlines plane was travelling from Chitral to Islamabad when it crashed.

It came down in the Havelian area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, about 77 miles north of Islamabad.

‘All of the bodies are burned beyond recognition,’ said government official Taj Muhammad Khan.

Witnesses said the aircraft was on fire before it hit the ground.

Pakistan Aviation Secretary Irfan Elahi said the plane had suffered engine problems but it was too early to determine the cause of the accident. The military said it had sent in troops and helicopters. Jamshed, a singer in one of Pakistan’s first successful pop groups in the 1990s, abandoned his singing career to join the Tableeghi Jamaat group, which travels across Pakistan and abroad preaching Islam.

In his last tweet, Jamshed posted pictures of a snow-capped mountain, calling Chitral ‘Heaven on Earth’.

According to the flight manifest, there were three people on board with foreign names.

Plane crashes are not uncommon in Pakistan. In recent years, media have reported on multiple nearmisses as planes over-ran runways and engines caught fire.

In 2010, a plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad, killing all 152 on board. Two years later, a plane operated by a private company, with 127 people on board, crashed near the capital. All on board were killed.