152 killed in Islamabad plane crash

SOURCE: - DAILY TIMES, Islamabad DATE:-29 July 10

ISLAMABAD: Tragedy struck a commercial flight coming from Karachi on Wednesday as it crashed into Margalla Hills outside Islamabad amid bad weather, killing all 152 people onboard.

In the country’s worst plane crash ever, rescue workers battled fires and muddy conditions as they searched in vain to find survivors of the Airblue flight.

Authorities said there were 152 people, including six crew members and seven children, onboard. Two US citizens and an Austrian-born businessman were also aboard the aircraft, an Airbus A321 operating as Airblue flight ED-202.

Bodies of 106 passengers had been recovered and shifted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) before the rescue operation was suspended due to darkness.

The plane had left Karachi at 7:45am for a two-hour flight to Islamabad and was trying to land during cloudy and rainy weather. However, 20 minutes before the flight was to land at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, the control tower lost contact with the plane.

“The pilot was given directions to land either on runway I or II,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters. “The plane was at 2,600 feet before landing but suddenly it went to 3,000 feet, which was unexplained,” he said, adding, “If the visibility to the runway was poor, then the flight should have been diverted.”

 Eyewitnesses saw the plane flying at an unusually low altitude before a loud boom. The plane disintegrated into a gorge between two hills, enveloped in cloud, five kilometres from Margalla Road. The pilots did not send any distress signal before the crash.

 The crash site covered a large area on both sides of the hills, including a section behind the Faisal Mosque. Due to the hilly terrain and distance from the main road, the rescue operation got off to a slow start. Fire engines could not reach the area, so rescue workers and personnel of the Pakistan Army made their way to the hill by cutting down the thick vegetation cover. It took them another two hours to bring the fire under control. Rescuers said they had to dig through the rubble with their bare hands, with fire and thick smoke hampering their work. Three army helicopters also arrived to participate in the operation, however they could not land in the area. Though the cause of the crash was not immediately clear, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said the government does not suspect terrorism.

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