Authorities said Wednesday they had recovered the black box of a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, PK-661, which crashed in a mountainous northern region.
Pakistan Army said it had recovered 40 dead bodies and transferred them to Ayub Medical Complex after the ill-fated flight carrying about 47 people crashed in the Havelian area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about 125km (77 miles) north of Islamabad.
PIA said its plane lost contact with the control tower en route to the capital, Islamabad, from the northern region of Chitral.
"All of the bodies are burned beyond recognition. The debris is scattered," Taj Muhammad Khan, a government official based in Havelian, told Reuters.
Khan, who was at the site of the crash, said witnesses told him "the aircraft has crashed in a mountainous area, and before it hit the ground it was on fire".
Images shown on TV channels and circulated on social media showed a trail of wreckage engulfed in flames on a mountain slope.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) put the number of people on board at 47 but Sohail Ahmed, a PIA official in Chitral, said there were 41 people on board, including four crew members.
According to the flight manifest, there were several people on board with foreign names.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Minister for Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan have directed federal departments concerned to immediately initiate rescue efforts and help the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government.
#PM has directed all concerned department #MOI, #NADRA & NDMA to give every possible facilitation to bereaved families in #ATR PIA Crash
— Govt of Pakistan (@pid_gov) December 7, 2016
#PIA Emergency response center activated and can be accessed via hotlines 0092-21-99044890, 99044376
— Govt of Pakistan (@pid_gov) December 7, 2016
"Rescue teams are reaching the scene of the crash, and then we will know more," Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George told Reuters.
The army said it had dispatched troops and helicopters to the location.
Junaid Jamshed, a well-known Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim cleric, was on board the crashed aircraft, according to Ahmed, the PIA official in Chitral.
Jamshed, a singer in one of Pakistan’s first major rock bands in the 1990s, abandoned his singing career to join the Tableeghi Jamaat group, which travels across Pakistan and abroad preaching about Islam.
Heaven on Earth Chitral.
With my friends in the Path of Allah . Snowpacked Tirchmir right behind us pic.twitter.com/ZajcWEKlrG
— Junaid Jamshed (@JunaidJamshedPK) December 4, 2016
Pakistan's last major air disaster was in 2015 when a military helicopter crashed in a remote northern valley, killing eight people including the Norwegian, Philippine and Indonesian envoys and the wives of Malaysian and Indonesian envoys.
The deadliest crash was in 2010, when an Airbus 321 operated by private airline Airblue and flying from Karachi crashed into hills outside Islamabad while about to land, killing all 152 on board.
The accident was blamed on a confused captain and a hostile cockpit atmosphere in an official report.
*This is a developing story
