No survivors likely in crash of Pakistan plane

PIA said its plane lost contact with the control tower on route to the capital, Is-lamabad, from the northern region of Chitral. The plane crashed in the Havelian area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, about 125 km (77 miles) north of Islamabad. 

“All of the bodies are burned beyond recognition. The debris is scattered,” Taj Muhammad Khan, a government official based in Havelian, told Reuters.

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

Images shown on Pakistani TV channels 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 So-hail Ahmed, a PIA official in Chitral, said there were 41 people on board, including four crew members. “Rescue teams are reaching the scene of the crash, and then we will know more,” Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George told  Reuters. Geo News and Dawn News TV stations, citing civil aviation sources, said the plane lost contact with the CAA at around 4.30 p.m. (1130 GMT). Junaid Jamshed, a wellknown Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim cleric, was on board the crashed aircraft, accord-ing to Ahmed, the PIA official in Chitral. 

Jamshed, a singer in one of Pakistan’s first major rock bands in the 1990s, aban-doned 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 with foreign names.