Plane carrying 152 crashes

A PAKISTANI passenger plane with at least 150 people on board crashed in a ball of flames while trying to land in Islamabad during bad weather, aviation officials say.

Up to five people are confirmed dead and another five injured survivors have been recovered, according to a senior minister on Wednesday.

Many more are feared dead.

The Airblue plane crashed in the densely wooded Margalla Hills surrounding Pakistan's capital on Wednesday morning but the cause was not immediately clear, said Pervez George, a civil aviation official.

He said the plane had left the southern city of Karachi at 7.45am local time (1245 AEST) for a two-hour scheduled flight to Islamabad and was trying to land during difficult weather.

"The plane was about to land at the Islamabad airport when it lost contact with the control tower, and later we learned that the plane had crashed," George said.

He said 146 passengers were on the flight, along with six crew members.

However, Airblue spokesman Raheel Ahmed said the Airbus A321 had 144 passengers and six crew members on board.

"Apparently the cause of the crash is bad weather but we leave that to the investigators," he told Agence France-Presse.

"We are now preoccupied with rescue work and striving to take care of the relatives of the passengers who were on board."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that at least five injured people had been taken to hospital by helicopter.

"We are trying to get details about the passengers. It's a big tragedy. It's really a big tragedy," Malik told Express TV.

"Rescue teams have reached the area. They are fully equipped. They are scanning the entire area. Those wounded or survivors are being provided assistance and arrangements have been made to take them to hospitals."

Thick smoke was rising from an inaccessible region in the densely wooded hills, where helicopters circled overhead and rescue services dispatched ambulances to the nearest roads, an AFP correspondent said.

Pakistani news channels showed what appeared to be wreckage of the plane.

Fire was visible and smoke was blowing from the scene.

The army is sending special troops and helicopters to the area to assist rescue crews.

Mohammed Usman, an official at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, said dozens of relatives of passengers gathered there were crying and desperate to get information about their loved ones.

Saqlain Altaf told Pakistan's ARY news channel that he was on a family outing in the hills when he saw the plane, looking unsteady in the air.

"The plane had lost balance, and then we saw it going down," he said, adding he heard the crash.

City police chief Bani Amin said police were informed of a loud explosion and fire sweeping through the hills that dominate the Islamabad skyline, before confirmation that a passenger plane had crashed.

"The site of crash was inaccessible. We have sent teams. It is a forest. Rescue teams have been sent. Helicopters have also been deployed. It is difficult to take out each and everybody immediately," he told Pakistan's Geo TV.

Pakistan has a relatively good aviation safety record.

The most recent fatal passenger plane crash was a Pakistan International Airlines Fokker F27 plane that came down on July 10, 2006, killing 45 people.

Before that, the deadliest civilian plane crash involving a Pakistani jet was a PIA Airbus A300 that crashed into a cloud-covered hillside on its approach to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, killing 167 people in September 1992.