152 killed in Pakistan plane crash
Wednesday 28th July 2010, 2:33PM BST.
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An airliner crashed in Pakistan on its approach to an airport today killing all 152 on board. The Airblue Airbus flew into the hills surrounding the capital Islamabad in poor weather.
A rescue official said: “It is a great tragedy, and I confirm it with pain that there are no survivors.”
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. The plane left Karachi at 7.45am for a two-hour scheduled flight to Islamabad.
Airblue is a private service based in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and the flight was believed to be carrying mostly Pakistanis.
Rescuers scouring the heavily forested hills found 50 bodies in the wreckage by mid-morning.
“The plane was about to land at the Islamabad airport when it lost contact with the control tower, and later we learned that the plane had crashed,” said a spokesman.
At Islamabad airport, hundreds of friends and relatives of those on board the flight crowded ticket counters desperately seeking information. A large cluster of people also surrounded a passenger list posted near the Airblue counter.
The Pakistan Airline Pilot Association said the plane appeared to have strayed off course, possibly because of the poor weather.
An airline spokesman said an investigation would be launched, but for now the focus was to find survivors. The plane was no more than eight-years old and it had no known technical issues and the pilots did not make any emergency calls.
The last major plane crash in Pakistan was in July 2006 when a Fokker F-27 twin-engine aircraft operated by Pakistan International Airlines crashed outside the city of Multan.
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