Pakistani plane crash kills 152

Investigators are trying to determine what caused a deadly passenger jet crash near the Pakistani capitalon Wednesday.

All 152 people on board were killed after the Airblue jet crashed into the hills north of Islamabad. Early reports of survivors proved untrue. Two American citizens died in the crash, the White House said in a statement.

SLIDESHOW: Pakistani air crash The aftermath

"At this point, there is no report of any Canadians being involved," Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Lisa Monette told CBC News.

"The department continues to work to confirm whether there were any Canadians affected," she said.

Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the Capital Development Authority, which deals with emergencies, called thesituation at the site of the crash"heartbreaking" and confirmed that there were no survivors.

Local TV footage showed twisted metal wreckage hanging from trees and scattered across the ground on a bed of broken branches. Thick plumes of smoke were also seen emanating from the crash site in the heavily forested Margalla Hills. Helicopters hovered above.

Emergency crews formed a human chain to remove numerous body parts from the site, the BBC's Nadeem Sarwar told CBC News.

Dawar Adnan, a rescue worker with the Pakistan Red Crescent, also said he was "seeing only body parts."

"This is a very horrible scene," Adnan said. "We have scanned almost all the area, but there is no chance of any survivors."

Muddy conditions and hard-to-navigate roads kept emergency vehicles from attending the site, and authorities were unable to extinguish the smouldering wreckage by helicopter, Adnan said.

Weather possible cause

The airline plans to launch an investigation into the crash, said spokesman Raheel Ahmed. The plane had no known technical issues, and the pilots did not send any emergency signals, he said.

Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said the government does not suspect terrorism.

The Pakistan Airline Pilot Association said the plane appeared to have strayed off course, possibly because of the poor weather.

The plane an Airbus 321 was scheduled to land shortly before 10 a.m. local time after a two-hour flight from Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. But it encountered heavy monsoon rains and thick fog as it approached, then lost contact with the control tower and crashed.

Sarwar was at his office in Islamabad when he heard the plane fly low over the city. He rushed to the window in time to see the plane begin to go down, then heard a big bang minutes later, he said. After that, he saw smoke rising from the hills, he told CBC News.

The crash site covered a large area on both sides of the hills, including a section behind Faisal Mosque, one of Islamabad's most prominent landmarks, and not far from the Daman-e-Koh resort.

Relatives mourn

Airblue is a private service based in Karachi, and Wednesday's flight was believed to be carrying mostly Pakistanis.

Earlier,hundreds of friends and relatives of those on board the flight swarmed ticket counters at the Islamabad airport desperately seeking information.

"We don't know who survived, who died, who is injured," said Zulfikar Ghazi, who waited to receive four relatives. "We are in shock, but no one is here to console us, to help us. How are we going to receive their bodies? If they are injured, where are they?"

Airbus said it would provide technical assistance to Pakistani authorities responsible for the investigation. The aircraft was initially delivered in 2000, and was leased to Airblue in January 2006. It accumulated about 34,000 flight hours during 13,500 flights, it said.

The only previous recorded accident for Airblue, a carrier that began flying in 2004, was a tail-strike where the rear end of an aircraft touchesthe runway in May 2008 at Quetta airport by one of the airline's Airbus 321 jets. There were no casualties and damage was minimal, according to the U.S.-based Aviation Safety Network.

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