No survivors likely in crash

THERE are unlikely to be any survivors from a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane crash yesterday in a mountainous northern region, a government official at the crash site said. The plane was carrying about 40 people. PIA said its plane had lost contact with the control tower en route to the capital, Islamabad, from the northern region of Chitral.

The plane crashed in the Havelian area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, about 125km north of Islamabad.

“All of the bodies are burnt beyond recognition. The debris is scattered,” government official Taj Muhammad Khan said.

Khan, who was at the crash site, said witnesses had told him the aircraft had crashed in a mountainous area, and had been on fire before it hit the ground.

Images shown on Pakistani TV and circulated on social media showed a trail of wreckage engulfed in flames on a mountain slope.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) put the number of people on board at 47 but Sohail Ahmed, a PIA official, said there had been 41 people on board, including four crew members.

Junaid Jamshed, a well-known Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim cleric, had been on board the crashed aircraft, Ahmed said.

Jamshed, a singer in one of Pakistan’s first major rock bands in the 1990s, abandoned his singing career to join the Tableeghi Jamaat group, which travels across Pakistan and abroad preaching about Islam.

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