Islamabad. All the 48 persons on board a PIA ATR-42 aircraft were killed December 7 a few minutes before its due landing in Islamabad.
The aircraft had a crew of five on its domestic route from Chitral to Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International Airport. The Civil Aviation Authority said there were no survivors and the army was deployed to recover the bodies of ill-fated passengers.
The propeller-driven aircraft was on an hour long flight, and reports indicate that there was a fire onboard possibly because of an engine problem. The pilots gave a mayday emergency call before the aircraft hit the mountainous terrain over Abbotabad and turned into a ball of fire.
A Pakistan Ordnance Factory is located near the site of the crash, but it was safe.
The Dawn newspaper quoted PIA spokesperson Daniyal Gilani as saying that besides the five crew, those killed included a ground engineer, 31 men, 9 women and 2 infants. Three of the victims were foreigners including a Chinese.
