No hope for Pakistan plane crash survivors

HUSSAIN ABAD, Pakistan: A passenger airliner crashed near Islamabad on Friday while trying to land during a thunderstorm, officials said, with all 127 people on board believed dead.

The Bhoja Air flight from Karachi burst into flames after coming down in  fields near a village on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital as it tried to  land in rain and hail at the city’s international airport.

The airline said the Boeing 737 was carrying 121 passengers, including 11  children, as well as six crew.

“There is no chance of any survivors. It will be only a miracle. The plane  is totally destroyed,” police official Fazle Akbar told AFP from the crash site.

So far 110 bodies have been recovered from the crash site, Brigadier  Sarfraz Ali, who is heading the recovery efforts, told reporters.

“We cannot identify them because some of the bodies are not recognisable,”  he said.

Debris from the crash was scattered over a two-kilometre (mile-and-a-half)  radius, he said. Lights had been brought to the site to allow work to continue  through the night, he added.

Torn fragments of the fuselage, including a large section bearing the  airline’s logo, littered the fields around the village of Hussain Abad, where  the plane came down.

Rescue workers in orange jumpsuits and local residents used torches to  search through the wreckage after nightfall, assisted by soldiers carrying  assault rifles.

Part of the airline’s name could be read on a large section of ripped white  fuselage from the passenger cabin.

The smell of burning filled the air at the scene and human limbs were  scattered in a large area spattered with blood, witnesses said.

An AFP reporter saw an orange flight data recorder in a house where some of  the wreckage fell.

Pakistan Navy official Captain Arshad Mahmood said the crash happened as  the plane approached the runway to land.

“The weather was very bad, there was hail and thunderstorm. The pilot lost  control and hit the ground. It tossed up due to the impact and exploded and  came down in a fireball,” he said.

Saifur Rehman, an official from the police rescue team, said the plane  burst into flames after impact.

“Fire erupted after the crash. The wreckage is on fire, the plane is  completely destroyed,” Rehman told Geo television.

An airport source said the plane had been due to land at Islamabad airport  at 6:50 pm (1350 GMT) but lost contact with the control tower at 6:40 pm and  crashed shortly afterwards.

Distraught relatives gathered at the airports in Islamabad and Karachi,  searching for the names of loved ones on the passenger list for the ill-fated  flight.

“Please don’t talk to me, I have just lost my loving father,” a teenage boy  cried in Karachi.

A probe has been ordered into the crash, Defence Secretary Nargis Sethi  said.

“A team of investigators comprising senior civil aviation officials have  immediately started investigations,” Sethi said.

“We are working under the direct supervision of president and prime  minister.”    Nadeem Khan Yusufzai, director general of Pakistan’s Civil Aviation  Authority, said initial reports suggested the bad weather was to blame for the  crash.

Bhoja Air relaunched domestic operations with a fleet of five 737s in  March, according to newspaper reports, when the airline was planning to start  flights connecting Karachi, Sukkur, Multan, Lahore and Islamabad.

Bhoja had been grounded in 2000 by the Civil Aviation Authorities amid  financial difficulties, the reports said.

The worst aviation tragedy on Pakistani soil came in July 2010 when an  Airbus 321 passenger jet operated by the private airline Airblue crashed into  hills overlooking Islamabad while coming in to land after a flight from Karachi.

All 152 people on board were killed in the accident, which occurred amid  heavy rain and poor visibility.

The deadliest civilian plane crash involving a Pakistani jet came in 1992  when a PIA Airbus A300 crashed into a cloud-covered hillside on its approach to  the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, killing 167 people.   - AFP

Pakistani villagers look at the debris from a plane following the crash of a Bhoja Air Boeing 737 on the outskirts of Islamabad on April 20, 2012. Up to 130 people are feared dead after a Boeing 737 crashed while trying to land in bad weather near the Pakistani capital Islamabad today, officials said. Topshots photo

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