KARACHI, March 9: The headless body that was found on Gadani beach on Sunday has been identified as an Afghan official, who was killed with seven others in a plane crash on Feb 24, police and Edhi sources said.

The body was first taken to PN Shifa. The Defence police later sent it to the Edhi’s morgue near Sohrab Goth where the victim was identified as Rahmatullah Popal by his brother-in-law Abdul Fateh, the police sources said.

Later in the night, Ahmed Ratabi Popal, the victim’s brother, also came from Islamabad and identified the body from the ring which the victim was wearing in his finger and his shoes, a senior police officer told Dawn on Sunday night.

The bodies of a Chinese official and that of the Afghanistan’s minister were still untraced, sources said, adding there were no survivors and the Pakistan Navy rescue teams had recovered five bodies from the sea soon after the plane crash.

The sources said divers of the Pakistan Navy found Mr Rahmatullah’s body on Gadani beach while searching for the remaining bodies in the Arabian Sea near Cape Montze beach.

Mr Rahmatullah was adviser to Afghanistan’s minister of mines and industries, Juma Mohammed Mohammedi, who was killed with seven others when a chartered Cessna aircraft, bound for the Juzzak airfield near Saindak in Balochistan, crashed in the Arabian Sea, some 56km west of Karachi.

The Cessna, which was chartered by Star Aviation from the Edhi Air Ambulance for a Chinese firm, Metallurgic Construction Company Resource Development, had left Karachi airport at 8:10am for the Juzzak airfield with eight persons on board — five Afghans, one Chinese and two Pakistanis - including the pilot.

The pilot of the aircraft was Syed Sajid Ali of the Edhi Air Ambulance, a retired colonel. Captain Nadir Iqbal Mirza, a great grandson of renowned Sindhi scholar/writer Mirza Qaleech Baig, representing Star Aviation, was also on board.