Five bodies recovered from Pakistani plane wreckage
At least five bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of a passenger plane that crasehd in Pakistan with 152 people on board, Pakistani officials have said.
The plane operated by domestic carrier Airblue crashed into the Margalla Hills area in Islamabad this morning.
A Civil Aviation Authority official said 146 passengers were on the flight along with six crew members.
The exact cause of the crash was not immediately clear, said Pervez George, a civil aviation official.
He said the plane was flying from Karachi to Islamabad.
Amir Ahmed, Islamabad’s deputy commissioner, told the ARY news channel that rescuers had found at least three people who were alive but wounded.
“This is a miracle as we had been briefed that there might not be any survivors,” Mr Ahmed said.
The only previous recorded accident for Airblue, a carrier founded in 2003, was a tailstrike in May 2008 at Quetta airport by one of the airline’s Airbus 321 jets. There were no casualties and damage was minimal, according to the US-based Aviation Safety Network.
Airblue flies within Pakistan as well as internationally to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United Kingdom.
