A Pakistan International Airlines flight carrying 48 people crashed near Abbottabad on Wednesday. The aircraft, which was earlier reported missing, crashed near Havelian municipality’s Pipplian village, reported Dawn. The country’s Civil Aviation Authority said there were no survivors from the crash. Forty-two bodies have been recovered from the site of the crash so far, Geo News reported.
“Rescue teams are reaching the scene of the crash, and then we will know more,” said Pervez George, a spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority told Reuters. Another government official said they were not expecting to find survivors. Singer-turned-Islamic preacher Junaid Jamshed and Deputy Commissioner Chitral Osama Warraich were on board the flight.
The PK-661 flight was en route to Islamabad from Chitral. It was scheduled to reach the Pakistan capital at 4.40 pm (local time). A spokesperson for the airline Daniyal Gilani said the plane had lost contact with the control tower. “All resources are being mobilised to locate the aircraft,” he had said when the ATR model aircraft was reported missing.
According to Aviation Herald, the flight had reported technical snags with its left engine shortly. It had made a distress call to the control tower before losing contact with it and crashing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Havelian region.
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