Passenger Air Blue Plane Crashes in Islamabad, 152 on Board

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan News: A commercial passenger plane with 152 people on board crashed due to bad weather in Margalla Hills near the capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, officials said.

The Airbus 321, belonging to private airliner Airblue, lost contact with the control room of the Islamabad International Airport at 0443 GMT while flying from Karachi.

The plane was carrying 146 passengers and six crewmen.

“Dead bodies are lying all around and very few might have survived in the accident,” Bin Yameen, a senior police official of Islamabad, told Reuters.

“Bodies are being lifted through helicopters.”

At least 10 people were killed and five injured, Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the state-run Capital Development Authority, told reporters.

Bin Yameen said a woman was alive at the scene and crying for help.

A thick blanket of cloud and smoke caused by fire could be seen rising from the heavily wooded crash site. A helicopter hovered overhead and flames licked at trees and what appeared to be wreckage from the plane, television pictures showed.

“It was raining. I saw the plane flying very low from the window of my office,” witness Khadim Hussain said.

The crash site is low on the Margalla Hills facing Islamabad, about 300 meters (yards) up the side of the hills. Smoke was visible from the tonier districts of the city, and crowds of onlookers lined the streets pointing and watching the smoke rise from the green hills.

Aaj News showed rescue workers making their way on foot to the crash site with some difficulty. A young man was weeping and being embraced by another man — with woods in the background.

The military said it had sent three helicopters to the site and troops had also been moved there.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ordered authorities to control the fire immediately and rescue passengers.

HEAVY RAINS

Reports said there had been heavy monsoon rains in the area for at least a couple of days.

Airblue began operations in 2004 with a fleet of Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft, the company said on its website (www.airblue.com).

Airbus confirmed one of its planes was involved in the Airblue crash.

“We regret to confirm there has been an accident with an Airbus aircraft and we will provide more information when we have more confirmed data available,” said Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath.

At the Islamabad’s international airport, passengers in the departure lounge scanned the television screens for news.

“I’m not surprised something like this has happened,” said Ahmed Fairuz, a passenger awaiting departure. “The weather is just too bad for flying.”

Forty-five people were killed when a passenger plane belonging to Pakistan International Airlines crashed near the central city of Multan in 2006.

Bangladesh’s Largest State-Run Hospital Has Banned

DHAKA Bangladesh : Bangladesh’s largest state-run hospital has banned staff from wearing full-face burqas after an increase in thefts of mobile phones and wallets from wards, a hospital chief said Monday.

Female staff have been ordered to wear standard uniforms, which do not cover either the hair or face, while on duty at the Bangabandhu Medical University Hospital in Dhaka, senior administrator Abdul Majid Bhuiyan told AFP.

“We decided to enforce our uniform regulations after discovering instances of stealing by veiled staff,” he said, adding some burqa-wearing staff had also been secretly sending unqualified “proxy workers” to cover shifts for them.

Only a small number of women working at the hospital wear the full-face veil, he said.

“Doctors have also said burqa-clad women who travel to work on crowded public buses then do not change into regulation uniform could carry diseases into the hospital,” he said.

Bangladesh has the world’s fourth-largest Muslim population. Islam is the state religion although only a small minority of women wear the burqa.

Twins Separated from Bangladesh Intensive Care: Hospital

SYDNEY news update: Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna have left intensive care as they continue their remarkable recovery from surgery to separate their conjoined heads, the hospital said.
The two-year-old girls, rescued from a Dhaka orphanage, moved to a shared room on the normal ward on Monday, just a week after the 32-hour operation to disconnect their fused skulls, brains and blood vessels.

“They are sharing a room together and settling into their new environment,” Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital said in a statement.

“The girls are getting to know the new staff who will be caring for them now that they have left intensive care.”

The twins’ heads remain heavily bandaged but they have appeared otherwise well, with Trishna awake and talking two days after surgery and Krishna blowing a signature raspberry when she was woken from a medical coma on Saturday.

Their condition has amazed medical staff who nursed them back to fitness after they arrived in fading health from Bangladesh two years ago, and gave them just a 25 percent chance of both recovering completely from the separation.

“We’re all so proud of our children’s hospital and we’re so proud of the quality of the nurses and the staff and the doctors that we’ve got there,” Victoria state Premier John Brumby told Fairfax radio.

“This was just another great example where these two children, who I think, to be honest, many of us thought were not going to get through, have come through, fingers crossed at this stage, with flying colours.”

The girls’ 22-year-old mother, who was unable to care for the sickly babies and handed them to an orphanage soon after their birth, has said she hopes to travel to Australia to see them.

Blast In Quetta

QUETTA: Six persons including Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Operations (OPS) and his drive have received injuries in an explosion in Quetta, whereas according to hospital sources the dead body of a person – who died in the blast – has been transferred to the infirmary.

According to police, DIG police Nizam Shahid Durrani received injures in an explosion on Spinny Road here, who have been shifted to CMH hospital.

Police are trying to determine the nature of the blast.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses have also reported aerial-firing after the explosion.

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