Air crash: Bhoja Air owner barred from leaving Pakistan

[email protected] (PTI, Photos by AFP)
April 21, 2012

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Islamabad, April 21: A total of 127 people were killed when a Boeing 737-200 of Bhoja Air crashed a short distance from the international airport in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, the second such accident in less than two years.

Bhoja Air's flight B4-213 from Karachi to Islamabad lost contact with air traffic control shortly after 6.30 pm on Friday as it was coming in to land at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, which serves both Islamabad and Rawalpindi, amidst bad weather.


The plane slammed into the ground at Hussainabad village, located less than 10 km from the airport.


Debris was scattered over an area of over one kilometre and parts of the aircraft fell on some houses in the village though there were no reports of casualties on the ground.


All 121 passengers, including 11 children and infants, and six crew members were killed instantly, officials said.


Mohammad Asif Majeed, director of the Disaster Management Directorate, confirmed there were no survivors.


He said the airliner had crashed on a "cluth of houses in a village".


The civil aviation authority ordered an investigation to ascertain the cause of Friday's crash. Search teams that fanned out across the crash site faced problems in the initial stage due to rain and lack of electricity.


Authorities later sent generators and search lights to the site and investigators located the Bhoja Air airliner's "black box" or flight data recorder late in the night.


Bodies and body parts were taken from the crash site to the state-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, where authorities began conducting DNA tests to hand over the remains to the next of kin.


Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the remains of at least 120 people had been brought to PIMS early this morning.

Malik said Farooq Bhoja, a member of the family that owns Bhoja Air, was included on the interior ministry's exit control list, a document with the names of people barred from travelling out of Pakistan.


An FIR had been registered and the ongoing investigation would determine whether aircraft was "technically capable", Malik said.


The interior minister, who visited the crash site last night, told reporters that the wings of the aircraft were on fire before it crashed.


Islamabad and Rawalpindi had experienced bad weather, including rain and lightning, at the time of the accident, and several witnesses told TV news channels that they had seen the aircraft burst into flames after being hit by lightning shortly before it crashed.


However, there was no official confirmation of reports of a lightning strike.


Capt Arshad Mehmood, a Pakistan Navy pilot who lives near the site of the crash, told reporters that he had seen the aircraft stall and descend rapidly before it hit the ground.


Mehmood said he believed the pilot had "probably lost control" of the aircraft in "very rough weather".


This was the second major air disaster in the vicinity of the Pakistani capital since July 28, 2010, when an Air Blue airliner slammed into the Margalla Hills in cloudy weather, killing all 152 people on board.


Anxious people gathered at the airports in Karachi and Rawalpindi to get information about the crash.


Many broke down and cried. Among the passengers were a newly wed couple, Sania Abbas and Sajjad Ali Rizvi, who were on their way to Islamabad for their honeymoon.


Bhoja Air was revived recently after being closed for over a decade since it ran into financial problems in 2001.


Media reports said the airline had a fleet of ageing aircraft, mostly Boeing 737-200s.

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News Network
March 25,2024

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A teenager who led over 100 people to safety during Friday’s terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall, has been hailed as a hero. 15-year-old Islam Khalilov, who worked part-time in one of the cloakrooms at Crocus City, recounted the events of the tragic evening to the Ruptly video agency.

The concert venue situated just outside of Moscow was packed ahead of a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic, when a group of terrorists armed with assault rifles forced their way into the building. They fired indiscriminately at fleeing people and then set the concert hall on fire.

According to the latest estimates, the attack has claimed the lives of at least 137 people, with about 180 injured.

Khalilov told the video agency that “it was when people started running from the escalator, from the stairway” that he realized that an emergency was occurring. The teenager said that he was acting on “instincts” at the time and used his thorough knowledge of the premises to quickly arrange visitors’ evacuation toward another building within the Crocus City complex.

“I started shouting all across the foyer, all across Crocus City Hall - ‘Folks, there’s a shooting! All run to the expo!’ – and I was showing where they had to go and was helping everyone,” he explained.

According to the cloakroom attendant, “there was a stampede, and everyone was in shock at first. No one knew what to do and where to go.”

Khalilov added that he himself was running behind the entire group to make sure he had not left anyone behind.

The teenager admitted to being “really scared” all along, but still managed to make the right use the instructions he’d previously been given on how to evacuate patrons in case of an emergency.

He told Ruptly that, at one point, he had caught a glimpse of one of the terrorists.

“I saw one, [he was] bearded and in green fatigues, he was walking around with an assault rifle,” the teenager recounted.

He also recalled seeing a man getting fatally shot by one of the assailants, adding that he “can’t stop thinking about it.”

The 15-year-old said he doesn’t consider himself a hero, and that he was just doing his job.

Explaining what helped him overcome fear, Khalilov reasoned that “It’s better to sacrifice yourself than to let a hundred people die.”

After Khalilov’s feat had been reported-on by several Russian media outlets, his favorite football club, FC Spartak Moscow, invited him to a meeting where he was presented with free passes to their matches.

Popular Russian rap artist Morgenstern said he had transferred 1,000,000 rubles ($11,000) to the teenager – something that Khalilov has confirmed to media.

The leader of Russia's Muslims, Mufti Ravil Guynutdin, has announced that Khalilov would receive a medal for his bravery.

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News Network
March 28,2024

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Russia says it is "extremely hard to believe" that Daesh could have staged the recent hugely deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall that the country's intelligence and security officials have blamed on Ukraine and its Western backers.

Four gunmen burst into the Russian capital's Crocus City Hall on Friday and began shooting at the people, who were attending an event. The Takfiri terrorist group has allegedly claimed responsibility for the massacre that killed at least 143.

Speaking on Wednesday, however, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova cast that claim into serious doubt.

"In order to ward off suspicions from the collective West, they urgently needed to come up with something, so they resorted to ISIS (Daesh), pulled an ace out of their sleeve, and literally a few hours after the terrorist attack, the Anglo-Saxon media began disseminating precisely these versions," she said.

The chief of the Russian internal intelligence (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov has suggested that not only Ukraine, but also the United States and Britain might have been behind the shooting.

The Russian Federal Security Service has also said the gunmen planned to travel to Ukraine, where they were to be welcomed as "heroes." The FSB said Western intelligence services aided the attackers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also suggested that Ukraine stood to derive benefit from the attack and that Kiev might have played a role.

He has said that someone on the Ukrainian side had prepared a "window" for the gunmen to escape across the border before they were captured in western Russia on Friday night.

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News Network
March 16,2024

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Ottawa, Mar 16: An Indian-origin couple and their teenage daughter were killed in a "suspicious" fire which tore through their home last week in Canada's Ontario province, police said on Friday.

A fire engulfed a home at the Big Sky Way and Van Kirk Drive area of Brampton on March 7, a press release by the Peel Police said.

After the blaze was put out, investigators located what was believed to be human remains within the gutted house, but the number of people killed couldn't be ascertained at the time.

The charred remains were on Friday identified as those of three family members: 51-year-old Rajiv Warikoo; his wife, 47-year-old Shilpa Kotha; and their 16-year-old daughter, Mahek Warikoo.

Police said that they resided at the address before the fire.

Peel police Constable Taryn Young on Friday said the fire had been deemed suspicious, the CTV news channel reported.

"At this time, we are investigating this with our homicide bureau, and we are deeming this as suspicious as the Ontario Fire Marshal has deemed that this fire was not accidental," the report quoted Young as saying.

"There's not much left to it," Young said when asked about the possible cause of the fire.

"Looking into something like that as a fire marshal, I'm sure it's very tough when there is not much left to look at. But we are exhausting all avenues," she said.

The deceased family's neighbour, Kenneth Yousaf, said that the family had lived on the street for about 15 years, and he never noticed any problems with them.

Yousaf said he was alerted to the fire last week by a family member, who heard a big "bang." "When we came out, the house was on fire. So sad. Within a few hours, everything was down to the ground," the report quoted Yousaf as saying.

In a press release, police said they are continuing to investigate the deaths of the three family members and urged anyone with information to come forward.

"The circumstances surrounding the house fire remains the focus of an active investigation, and anyone with information or video footage (dashcam or otherwise) is urged to contact Homicide detectives," police said.

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