Flight carrying 48 people, including Junaid Jamshed crashes near Abbottabad

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane carrying 48 people crashed near Abbottabad after its engines stopped working. The passengers included singer-turned-Islamic-preacher Junaid Jamshed, Deputy Commissioner Chitral Osama Warraich and three foreigners among others. According to the latest updates, there are no survivors and operations are underway to retrieve the dead bodies.

The PIA flight PK-661 was on its way to the capital city of Islamabad from Chitral when it crash landed near a town called Havelian, which is a mountainous region. As the plane crashed, it burst into flames making rescue operations even more difficult.

According to the details provided, the pilot of the plane, Captain Saleh contacted the control tower and sent out a May-Day distress call. Shortly after that it went off the radar and crashed. The black box of the plane has been retrieved and now it will be sent for decoding to find out what actually happened before the crash.

PIA’s flight PK-661 departed from Chitral at 3:30 PM and it was scheduled to land at Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International Airport at around 4:40 PM. So far it is too early to ascertain what actually caused the crash, but according to some preliminary reports, the engines of the plane were not functioning properly.

So far 21 dead bodies have been retrieved from the crash site and efforts are underway to safely retrieve the rest as well. Army is also helping with the rescue operations and so far six helicopters are deployed for the purpose.

Famous Islamic preacher Junaid Jamshed and his wife were also on that plane. Jamshed had gone to Chitral with his companions for Islamic preaching. He had recently posted pictures of himself from Chitral.

The pilot of the plane, Captain Saleh is survived by a wife and four young daughters.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=54217

Posted by fatimaarshad on Dec 7 2016. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.