Plane with more than 40 on board crashes in Pakistan (photo)

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane with about 47 people on board crashed in the mountainous north of the country on Wednesday, December 7th, police and the civil aviation authority said.

PIA said a plane bound for the capital, Islamabad, from the northern town of Chitral lost contact with the control tower en-route.

An earlier statement said the ATR-42 turboprop aircraft was carrying around 40 people but the civil aviation authority said 47 people were on board. It is not clear if there were any casualties.

Laiq Shah, a senior police official in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said the plane had crashed in the province’s Havelian area.

“Rescue teams are reaching the scene of the crash, and then we will know more,” civil aviation authority spokesman Pervez George told Reuters.Dawn News TV stations, citing civil aviation sources, said the plane lost contact with civil aviation authority at around 4.30pm local tim.