21 Killed in Plane Crash at Karachi Airport, Pakistan

[Meatpie]

A charter plane carrying staff from Italian oil company Eni crashed minutes after take-off in Pakistan's business hub of Karachi on Friday, killing all 21 people on board.
The pilot of the twin-engine turboprop, operated by Pakistani charter JS Air, reported engine trouble, then nosedived near a military depot in a Karachi suburb, in an accident that civil aviation blamed on a technical fault.

"The plane has been totally gutted and there are no survivors," Lieutenant Colonel Noor Alam told reporters near the crash site in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.
Television footage showed the aircraft split in two, the front part totally destroyed and the rear section torn off alongside two wheels.
"The cause of [the] crash was a technical fault. The pilot reported that one of the engines was not working. Everyone died. There were no survivors," Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George said.

The 21 people onboard were believed to be mostly Pakistanis, although embassies said they were checking to see whether the dead included foreigners.
The Beech 1900 aircraft took off from Karachi's Jinnah airport shortly after 7:00am (local time) on a 200-kilometre journey to an oilfield at Bhit Shah in the southern province of Sindh.
The pilot contacted air traffic control almost immediately, reporting engine trouble and was given permission to return to the airport.
"It caught fire," one witness told reporters near the crash site.

"The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot have not been retrieved so far. We will have to cut the front portion to recover their bodies.
"The bodies were charred. One of my colleagues on the site literally fainted after seeing the bodies."

Mr George and police said there were 21 people on the aircraft - 17 passengers, one guard, one technician, the pilot and co-pilot.
An official from JS Air confirmed to AFP that the aircraft had been a Beech 1900, but declined to make further comment.

The company website says it operates three Beech 1900C aircraft dating from the early 1990s.
It says it offers a "wide-ranging charter business domestically" and flies internationally, operatin
g charters in Sri Lanka.