Plane Carrying 152 Crashes in Pakistan; No Survivors

(July 28) -- A Pakistani airliner carrying 152 people crashed this morning in rainy hills while approaching the capital, killing everyone aboard, including two Americans, officials said.

Initial reports that as many as eight survivors had been pulled alive from the fiery wreckage turned out to be false, sending a wave of grief across a gaggle of weeping relatives crowding Islamabad's international airport. By mid-afternoon, more than 100 bodies had been retrieved, an Islamabad police official told CNN.

The Airbus 321, belonging to the Pakistani airline Airblue, crashed near the end of a two-hour flight from Karachi to Islamabad, going down in fog in the lush Margalla Hills. The cause of the crash wasn't immediately clear, but officials said terrorism is not suspected. Details were reported by several news agencies.

Local Geo TV footage showed white smoke billowing from the crash site in forested hills outside the capital, with the plane's burning fuselage barely visible amid charred trees. Bystanders on a road nearby could be seen covering their mouths and eyes in horror. Helicopters hovered overhead.

"The plane is totally destroyed, the pieces and parts scattered over a large distance," the BBC quoted Pakistani TV journalist Sabur Ali Sayed as saying. Victims' bodies "are badly mutilated and burnt," he said.

Rain, fog and steep ravines made it difficult for rescuers to reach what was left of the plane, scattered across two hillsides. "It is all ridge line which as about 90-degree gradient and there is no access track and road," Nadeem Ahmad, head of Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, told VOA News.

A Pakistani Red Crescent worker combing the hillside told The Associated Press he's "seeing only body parts" with no chance of survivors.

Dawn News and other news sites said the plane was carrying a total of 152 people, including passengers and crew. Dawn News also published a list of their names on its website. The U.S. Embassy said two Americans were among the dead.

Officials said it was too early to determine what caused the crash, and whether rain was a factor. Pakistan is in the midst of monsoon season, when heavy rains sweep the subcontinent from June through September. The plane's black box, with voice and flight data recorders, has been recovered and is being analyzed, the Los Angeles Times reported.

One witness said it was raining heavily at the time of the crash.

"It came from the city toward the Margalla Hills. It was raining heavily," resident Ahsan Mukhtar told CNN. "It shattered into pieces as soon as it crashed. A burst of flames came off, but the rain put out the fire."

Airblue is a privately owned Pakistani airline that flies domestically as well as to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Britain. The only previous incident involving Airblue, which began flying in 2004, was a tail collision in 2008 in Quetta, Pakistan. There were no injuries and minimal damage.

The manufacturer of today's plane, Airbus, issued a statement on its website offering condolences and said it would assist in the crash investigation. The aircraft had logged 34,000 flight hours in some 13,500 trips.

At Islamabad's airport, relatives swarmed around Airblue's ticket counter, their hopes shattered after initial reports that some passengers may have survived.

"The situation at the site of the crash is heartbreaking," emergency spokesman Imtiaz Elahi told the AP. "It is a great tragedy, and I confirm it with pain that there are no survivors."

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani issued a statement saying he and his cabinet "expressed grief and sorrow" and offered prayers for passengers who were killed.

"The federal cabinet declared one day national mourning because of this tragic incident. The prime minister called off the cabinet meeting until next week in the wake of this tragic incident," Gilani's office said, according to Al-Jazeera.

Today's crash was believed to be Pakistan's deadliest airline disaster. Its last major crash was in 2006, when a Pakistan International Airlines plane went down in a wheat field near the central city of Multan, killing all 45 people aboard.

Irshad Kassim, director of Pakistan's Kasb Bank, was supposed to be on today's flight but postponed his trip for a day. His name was still on the flight's manifest, and he answered the phone himself when an Airblue representative called this morning to alert his next of kin about the fatal crash.

"I thank God that I did not take this flight, and decided to travel tomorrow instead of today," Kassim told CNN. "I started looking at my children's pictures ... That's the first thing I did after looking at the television," he said. "I'm still very shaken, I just can't think straight."