KARACHI (AFP) – A charter aircraft carrying about 20 employees of an Italian oil company crashed minutes after take-off in Pakistan's business hub of Karachi on Friday and a military spokesman said there were no survivors.It was not immediately clear what caused the crash but the plane operated by Pakistani charter JS Air reported engine trouble and came down near a residential and a military area in the Gulistan-e-Jauhar suburb.
"The plane has been totally gutted and there are no survivors," Lieutenant Colonel Noor Alam told reporters.
The plane was believed to be carrying about 20 people, mostly Pakistanis, he said, adding that bodies have not yet been identified.
It was not immediately clear if there were any foreigners on board, he said.
A company official in Karachi told AFP the plane was chartered by ENI, an Italian multinational oil company, and was carrying its employees.
"Twelve bodies have already been recovered," Alam said. "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," he added.
Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority said the plane had around 20 people on board and was carrying oil company employees to an oil field at Bhit Shah in the southern province of Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.
"Soon after they left, they contacted the airport control tower and said there was a problem in one of the engines. The plane was directed to return and soon after it crashed," said authority spokesman Pervaiz George.
The wreckage fell in an area located near military installation, police officials said.
JS Air was not immediately reachable for 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, operating charters in Sri Lanka.
Karachi is Pakistan's business and economic capital. It is a teeming city of 16 million on the south coast with an Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock in preparation for travel overland to soldiers in Afghanistan.
Plane crashes are relatively rare in Pakistan, an enormous country of around 170 million people where inter-city travel is most efficient by air.
On July 28, a passenger Airbus 321 jet operated by private Airblue crashed into hills of the Pakistani capital Islamabad while coming into land after a flight from Karachi, killing 152 people on board.
Two Americans, an Austrian-born businessman, five children and two babies were among those killed in the worst aviation tragedy on Pakistani soil.
The only deadlier civilian plane crash involving a Pakistani jet occurred when a PIA Airbus A300 crashed into a cloud-covered hillside as it approached the Nepalese capital Kathmandu in 1992, killing 167 people.
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