Pakistani plane crashes; all 48 aboard feared dead

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistan International Airlines plane with 48 people on board, including a famous former pop singer, crashed near Abbottabad in northern Pakistan on Wednesday, government officials and the airline said. The flight, PK 661, was traveling to Islamabad, the capital, from Chitral, a northern tourist destination near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, when it crashed, said Saeed Wazir, the deputy inspector general of police in Abbottabad district. Pakistan International Airlines, the national carrier, released a statement saying that 42 passengers, five crew members and one ground engineer were on the aircraft, an ATR-42 twin turboprop plane. In a telephone interview, the director-general of the Civil Aviation Authority, Asim Suleiman, said that in the minutes before the crash, the plane’s pilot radioed to air traffic controllers that the left engine had flamed out. Local television news networks broadcast images of the smoldering debris of the aircraft, sprawled over a large hilly area, as dozens of people ran toward the wreckage. A senior government official in Peshawar said three foreigners — one Australian, one Chinese and one Korean — were among the passengers.