The dead bodies of victims of Pakistan International Airline (PIA) flight PK-661 have reached Islamabad on Thursday.
The bodies are shifted from Ayub Medical Complex to PIMS and CMH Islamabad. Five bodies had been identified at Ayub Medical Complex.
Earlier, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) announced that the plane crash site in Havelian has been completely cordoned off.
DNA tests of the dead are beign conducted to identify them before the bodies are handed over to the relatives of the deceased.
The Islamabad-bound flight PK-661 took off at 3:30 pm from Chitral and went missing near Abbottabad before the pilots lost control over the aircraft and contact with control tower around 4:22 pm on Wednesday. A thick cloud of smoke was also seen billowing from the area where the aircraft came down.
Former famous Pakistani singer Junaid Jamshed, his wife Nahya, and Deputy Commissioner Osama Ahmed Waraich were also among the passengers on the ill-fated plane. According to family members, Jamshed was in Chitral on a preaching tour. 31 men, nine women and two infants were on board the flight, according to local media reports.
Three foreigners were also among the dead, officials said, with Austria’s foreign ministry later confirming two of its nationals were killed and Chinese state media saying one of its nationals was also among the victims.
Among those also on board was Junaid Jamshed, a former Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim, according to the Chitral airport manager and a local police official.
Tributes poured in on social media for the former lead singer of the country’s first major pop band, whose popular “Dil Dil Pakistan” became an unofficial national anthem.
Wednesday’s crash was the fourth deadliest on Pakistani soil.
The country’s deadliest air disaster was in 2010 when an Airbus 321 crashed into the hills outside Islamabad while about to land, killing all 152 on board.
