RAWALPINDI: None of the 33 persons including five members of crew who were on board the PIA Fokker plane which crashed yesterday [Dec 8] on its flight from Gilgit to Rawalpindi has survived, according to PIA. A PIA spokesman said here today that after strenuous efforts by the Pakistan Army and Pakistan Air Force, the wreckage of the plane was located by a Pakistan Army aviation helicopter on a thickly forested steep mountain slope covered with snow about 9,000 feet high, above village Maidan, about eight miles south of Jalkot, situated on the Indus Valley road.

… According to another report … army jawans had reached the wreckage of the crashed plane and were constructing a road to carry the bodies and the debris towards a safer place. The report said the plane had crashed in a jungle without any road near the crash site. [The source] said that a party of villagers from Maidan, who had earlier managed to reach the site, reported … no survivors. President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has learnt of the tragic accident with … sorrow and has directed that his personal condolences should be conveyed to the next of kin of the victims… .

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2022