Grief-struck families bury victims of plane crash

A number of affected families on Sunday buried their loved-ones killed in Friday’s plane crash in Islamabad.
All 127 people on board were killed, as investigators probed the causes of the fatal incident.
The Bhoja Air flight from Karachi came down in fields near a village in the outskirts of Islamabad on Friday evening, in the city’s second major fatal air crash in less than two years.
Thirteen of those killed were buried late on Saturday in Islamabad and funerals for 36 other victims were held in Karachi and other cities early on Sunday, with more ceremonies expected in different cities throughout the day.
Television broadcasts showed footage of distraught relatives, weeping and hugging each other as the dozens of coffins left Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital where the remains had been taken.
About nine bodies have not yet been identified and would undergo DNA tests, a hospital official said. The disaster was the city’s second major plane crash in less than two years – an Airblue plane came down in bad weather in July 2010, killing 152 – and victims’ families have voiced fury at the authorities.
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Chairman Nadeem Khan Yusufzai said the plane suddenly dropped from 2,900 feet to 2,000 feet as it made its final approach to land, and vanished from the airport radar.
“The flight data recorder has been recovered and will be sent abroad for analysis, and the overall investigation could take up to a year to complete its work,” he told reporters on Saturday.
Interior minister Rehman Malik said a committee had been set up to investigate the crash and the head of the airline, Farooq Bhoja, had been included in the “exit control list”.