Pakistan: No Survivors in PIA PK 661 Plane Crash
All 48 people on board a Pakistani passenger plane, which crashed in the country’s mountainous north, have died, the airline’s chairman has confirmed.
Pakistan International Airlines’ (PIA) PK 661 went down on a domestic flight from the city of Chitral to the capital Islamabad on Wednesday.
“There are no survivors, no one has survived,”Muhammad Azam Saigol told a press conference, about five hours after the plane crashed near the town of Havelian, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
Saigol said the ATR-42 aircraft had undergone regular maintenance and had in October passed an“Acheck”certification, conducted after every 500 hours of flight operations.
“I think that there was no technical error or human error ... obviously there will be a proper investigation,” he said.
The military said 40 bodies were recovered and rescue efforts involved about 500 soldiers, doctors and paramedics. The flight departed from Chitral around 15:30 local time (10:30 GMT) and was expected to land in Islamabad around 16:40.
Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the badly burnt bodies were taken to the Abbottabad Medical Complex.
“Five bodies have been identified, but the rest are unidentifiable,”our correspondent said.
Junaid Jamshed, Pakistan’s singer-turned-preacher, and his wife were also on board the plane that came down near the town of Havelian in Abbottabad district.
A PIA spokesperson told Al Jazeera it was too early to ascertain the cause of the crash.
“PIA aircraft ATR-42 (AP-BHO) crashed near Havelian at 16:42 hours, 42 passengers, five crew members and one ground engineer were on board,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“Rescue efforts are underway, and we are ascertaining the extent of damage to life of those on board the aircraft.”
Hospital officials told Al Jazeera that the bodies were badly burned and it was very difficult to identify them. Junaid was on seat Jamshed rocketed to fame in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s as the singer for the Vital Signs pop band.
He launched a solo career later with a string of chart-topping albums and hits.
He gave up music in 2001 and announced that he was devoting his life to spreading Islam.