No reports of survivors in Bhoja Air crash

Pakistan

No reports of survivors in Bhoja Air crash

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Emergency workers and bystanders used flashlights to search among smoldering wreckage.

20 April,2012 07:19 pm

A passenger airliner crashed near Islamabad on Friday while trying to land during a thunderstorm, officials said, with all 127 people on board believed dead.The Bhoja Air flight from Karachi burst into flames after coming down in fields near a village on the outskirts of the capital as it tried to land in rain and hail at the citys international airport.The airline said the Boeing 737 was carrying 121 passengers, including 11 children, as well as six crew.There is no chance of any survivors. It will be only a miracle. The plane is totally destroyed, police official Fazle Akbar told from the crash site.Torn fragments of the fuselage, including a large section bearing the airlines logo, littered the fields around the village of Hussain Abad, where the plane came down.Rescue workers in orange jumpsuits and local residents used torches to search through the wreckage after nightfall, assisted by soldiers carrying assault rifles.Part of the airlines name could be read on a large section of ripped white fuselage from the passenger cabin.The smell of burning filled the air at the scene and human limbs were scattered in a large area spattered with blood, witnesses said.Pakistan Navy official Captain Arshad Mahmood said the crash happened as the plane approached the runway to land.The weather was very bad, there was hail and thunderstorm. The pilot lost control and hit the ground. It tossed up due to the impact and exploded and came down in a fireball, he said.An airport source said the plane had been due to land at Islamabad airport at 6:50 pm (1350 GMT) but lost contact with the control tower at 6:40 pm and crashed shortly afterwards before reaching the runway.A probe has been ordered into the crash, Defence Secretary Nargis Sethi said, warning that traffic caused by people trying to get to the site was hindering rescue efforts.A team of investigators comprising senior civil aviation officials have immediately started investigations, Sethi said.We are working under the direct supervision of president and prime minister.Nadeem Khan Yusufzai, director general of Pakistans Civil Aviation Authority, said initial reports suggested the bad weather was to blame for the crash.Bhoja Air relaunched domestic operations with a fleet of five 737s in March, according to newspaper reports, when the airline was planning to start flights connecting Karachi, Sukkur, Multan, Lahore and Islamabad.Bhoja had been grounded in 2000 by the Civil Aviation Authorities amid financial difficulties, the reports said.The last major plane crash in the country — and Pakistans worst ever — occurred in July 2010 when an Airbus A321 aircraft operated by Airblue crashed in the hills overlooking Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board.