Islamabad: Pakistan on Saturday set up a judicial commission to probe the crash of a private passenger plane that killed 127 people and took the owner of the airline into “protective” custody.
Announcing the formation of the judicial commission, Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani said that without investigation no conclusion can be reached about the on Friday evening crash of Boeing 737-200 plane of Bhoja Air.
Gilani, who visited the state-run PIMS hospital in Islamabad where badly mutilated bodies of the victims including women and children had been shifted, told reporters that many of the bodies had been handed over to the next of kin after identification while the remaining would be given after the DNA tests which may take some time.
The Prime Minister described as big tragedy the crash of the private airliner, which was second major air disaster in the vicinity of the Pakistani capital since July 28 2010, when an Air Blue plane slammed into the Margalla Hills in cloudy weather killing all 152 people on board.
His comments came as Farooq Bhoja, a member of the family that owns Bhoja Air was taken into “protective custody” and barred from leaving the country, with authorities including his name on the “Exit Control List”.
The plane had crashed at 6.30 pm last just before it was to land at the international airport here. It slammed into the ground at Hussainabad village, located less than 10 km from the airport, amidst bad weather.
An FIR had been registered and the investigation would determine whether the aircraft that crashed was “technically capable,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.
Distraught relatives of the ill fated Pakistani airliner demanded answers from the authorities as even after 18 hours of the crash of the Bhoja Air’s 737 many of them were yet to trace their loved ones.
Weeping next of kin of the crash victims were doing the rounds from the wheat fields near the the Benazir Bhutto International Airport where the bodies remained scattered to the capital’s main hospital where coffins lined hallway.
The relatives task was compounded as body parts and severed limbs of passengers on board the ill-fated airliner which crashed near here were scattered over a one kilometre radius, eyewitnesses said as heavy rain hampered salvage operations.
All the 127 people on board the airliner perished when ageing Boeing from Karachi crashed and burst into flames as it came in to land at Islamabad airport in bad weather on Friday evening. The crash of the Bhoja Air’s ageing Boeing 737-200 shortly after being cleared to land at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport was the second mishap involving an aircraft near the Pakistani capital in bad weather in less than two years.
Even after 18 hours, the air around the crash site remained heavy with the smell of jet fuel and charred human flesh. The bodies, most of them burnt or mutilated beyond recognition, were scattered over a one kilometre radius. Eyewitnesses said they saw a fireball heading downwards and hitting the ground with a bang. Some bigger parts of the airliner got entangled with high voltage power lines, plunging the area into darkness and impeding the search operation.
“There were terrible scenes when we moved into the houses to recover bodies…I can’t explain in words what I have seen,” a rescue official told the Express Tribune.
“Most were in pieces. It was terrible. I cried after seeing dead children and women,” Raja Bashir, an eyewitness, said. Some of the wreckage fell on the roofs of houses in Husainabad village though there were no casualties on the ground. Soldiers and emergency workers resumed at first light the grim task of looking for bodies and body parts in wheat fields around the airport. (PTI)