All 152 aboard die in Islamabad plane crash

Updated at: 1710 PST, Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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ISLAMABAD: A passenger plane of a private airliner carrying 152 people crashed in a ball of flames Wednesday into densely wooded hills outside Islamabad amid heavy rain and poor visibility, killing everyone on board.

Rescue officials said pieces of charred flesh and body parts were littered around the smouldering wreckage, partially buried on a remote hillside, in the deadliest crash involving a Pakistani passenger jet in 18 years.

Private airline Airblue's flight ED 202 from Karachi was being diverted into land at Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International airport when witnesses saw it flying at an unusually low altitude before a defeaning boom.

The plane disintegrated into a gorge between two hills, enveloped in cloud and some distance from the road, severely hampering rescue efforts and limiting visibility for helicopters hovering overhead.

"I saw a big ball of smoke and fire everywhere with big pieces of aircraft rolling down the hill," said police official Haji Taj Gul.

"The plane was flying very low. Then we heard a loud noise," said Wajih-ur Rehman, a resident of the exclusive E-7 neighbourhood in the Margalla foothills, home to Western expatriates and some of Pakistan's elite.

"Nobody survived," Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. Bodies were mostly mutilated and in pieces, and would require identification, he said.

The civil aviation authority and Airblue said there were 152, including six crew, on board the doomed plane.

Zeeshan Haider, a Civil Aviation Authority official said seven children, including two babies, were on the flight manifest.

Reports had said a handful of people survived the disaster, but asked whether all those on board died Malik replied: "Yes, all of them are dead".

"It's a big tragedy. It's really a big tragedy," the minister said.

The US embassy said two Americans were on the flight.

"I can confirm there were two American citizens on the plane and we are working with Pakistani authorities as we normally do in cases such as this," embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire told a foreign news agency.

Officials said air traffic control diverted the plane on its final approach, owing to rain and thick cloud -- outside the normal route for aircraft flying up from the southern port city of Karachi.

The civil aviation authority said all possible causes would be investigated, including terrorism and bad weather, although officials gave no indication that an attack might have been to blame.

"The investigation teams will probe every possible reason behind the crash ranging from the bad weather to terrorism," said Riaz-ul-Haq, the authority's deputy director.

Rescue official Arshad Javed told of horrifying scenes at the crash site after a routine commuter flight turned to carnage.

"All we could see were charred hands or feet. I collected two heads, two legs and two hands in a bag.

"We shouted if anyone was there alive, but heard no voice," he said.

"The wreckage of the plane is buried under the debris. First machines have to be deployed there to remove debris off the hill and then we can reach to pull out bodies or survivors -- if any."

Police said the wreckage was scattered in three directions.

"Bodies were found in pieces. We have found equipment which may be the blackbox. Now experts will examine it," said city police chief Bani Amin.

The government declared a day of national mourning and called off a cabinet meeting as Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed his grief over the "tragic incident" and offered prayers for the dead.

Anguished families were in tears after hearing of the disaster while waiting to meet their relatives at the Islamabad arrivals terminal.

"We cannot explain our agony, we don't know if he is alive," said Bilal Haider, who had come to collect his younger brother Abbas returning from a trip to Karachi for a job interview.

The Airbus 321 of Airpblue took off from Karachi before 8:00 am (0300 GMT).

The Airbus was a single-aisle plane was a relatively young 10 years old, and the European company offered its full assistance to Pakistani investigators.

Airblue has been operating only since 2004, using new Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft on domestic routes and international services to Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Manchester.

Pakistan enjoys a relatively good air safety record.

The most recent fatal commercial crash was a Pakistan International Airlines Fokker F27 that came down in July 2006, killing 45 people on takeoff from the central city of Multan, bound for Lahore.

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


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By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD | Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:41pm EDT

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Heavy monsoon rains in Islamabad on Thursday hampered recovery efforts at the site of a Pakistani plane crash that killed all 152 people on board a day earlier, a senior police officer said.

The Airbus 321, belonging to private airline AirBlue, crashed on Wednesday into a steep and heavily-wooded hillside in Islamabad shortly before it was due to land after a flight from the southern port city of Karachi.

Thick fog and rainy weather are considered the most likely reasons for the worst aviation accident on Pakistani soil.

Bin Yameen, deputy inspector-general with the Islamabad police, told Reuters the operation to recover the remains of victims could not be resumed due to the heavy rain. Difficulty in accessing the site was also complicating salvage efforts.

"We are waiting for the rain to stop. In such weather, neither helicopters can fly nor rescue workers move up easily.

"We may give it a try but it seems very difficult to carry out such operation in difficult terrain," he said.

Investigators were looking into causes of the crash, said senior Civil Aviation Administration officer Ayaz Jadoon.

"They're going through records and documents, though they couldn't go up because of bad weather," he said, adding the plane's flight data recorder has yet to be recovered.

EVIDENCE WASHING AWAY

The control tower at the airport was sealed off, and radio traffic between the plane and the tower was being examined.

The torrential rain may also damage, or wash away, evidence at the site.

"Time is very precious," the investigation team's head, Khawaja Abdul Majeed, told Dawn News television after arriving in Islamabad late Wednesday from Karachi.

"We have to collect evidence as soon as possible, so we don't have much time."

While Wednesday's crash is the worst aviation accident inside Pakistan, the state-owned airline PIA has had worse disasters. In 1979 and 1992, PIA jets crashed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Kathmandu, Nepal, killing 156 and 167 people, respectively.

Within Pakistan, the last major aviation accident was in 2006 when a PIA plane crashed near the central city of Multan killing 45 people.

The federal information minister said late on Wednesday rescue workers had been able to recover 115 bodies during a day-long operation at the hard-to-access site.

Some relatives gathered at the city's main Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital to identify bodies.

A hospital official, Tahir Nadeem, said 59 bodies had been identified and taken away by their relatives while the remaining bodies -- mostly in pieces -- have been sent to the morgue.

The government declared a day of mourning on Thursday for the victims.

"My heart and mind are not ready to believe that he has died. I'm still hoping he might call me anytime," civil engineer Nadeem Ahmed told Reuters, as he searched among the bodies at the hospital for his brother. Ahmed did not find his brother's body.

Sarfraz Chaudhry, a retired soldier, was hoping to find body of his sister, Gulzar Bibi, who was one of eight family members on the ill-fated plane.

"She was coming here to attend a funeral of a 90-year-old relative, but nobody knew that she and others would have their last day," he said.

"We have identified six of our dead relatives, but of my sister and one other, we are still searching and hope that we find them."

(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony in Islamabad; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Miral Fahmy)