The death toll from the Pakistani plane crash has risen to 97, while two survivors have been confirmed, according to a new toll announced by the authorities Saturday morning.
The Ministry of Health in Karachi, the capital of Sindh Province, said that all passengers and crew of the plane are included in this new toll. She noted that the rescue operations ended this morning.
A Pakistani plane, "Airbus E-320", crashed on Friday over a residential neighborhood in Karachi, the largest city in southern Pakistan.
The plane crashed just before landing at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi from the eastern city of Lahore.
And sources in the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan said that contact with the plane was lost a minute before landing at the airport, and the "Geo News" channel reported that smoke was seen rising from the place of the crash.
Charred corpses were seen in the ambulance.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed his "shock and sadness", tweeting "his condolences to the families of the victims."
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that the plane was carrying a number of returnees to celebrate Eid Al Fitr.
For his part, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was praying "for those who died or were injured and their families." He added that the United States "stands with Pakistan during this difficult period."
Technical problem
Airbus said in a statement that the plane, which entered service in 2004, joined the fleet of Pakistan International Airlines in 2014.
The chief executive of the Pakistan International Air Company, Arshad Malik, said that the captain indicated in his last call that he was facing a "technical problem", adding that he was "informed of the presence of two runways ready to land, but decided to resume the rise."
According to Interior Minister Ijaz Ahmad Shah, the pilot of the plane reported that he had "lost an engine" and then issued a "distress call".
Crash incidents
The disaster comes just days after the country announced the resumption of domestic commercial flights, and it was for more than a month that all domestic flights were suspended in order to avoid the outbreak of the Corona virus, while the number of international flights was very limited.
The aviation safety record in Pakistan shows numerous crashes of civilian and military aircraft and helicopters over the years.
The last plane crash in Pakistan occurred in December 2016, when a Pakistan Airways plane crashed during an internal flight in a mountainous area in the north of the country, killing 47.
The crash was also the bloodiest in recent years in Pakistan in 2010, when a private Airbus 321 airliner crashed over the hills during a flight between Karachi and Islamabad shortly before landing in the capital, killing 152 people.