CCTV captures PIA plane crash near Karachi airport

Karachi : An Airbus A320 of the Pakistan International Airlines crashed into a residential area near Karachi airport on Friday; the deadly incident has been captured in one of the CCTV cameras installed in a nearby building.

As the CCTV video footage shows, there is an explosion and within a fraction of a second, thick plumes of black smoke rise in the air.

There were 99 people on board flight PK-8303 that took off from Lahore and was to land at the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi this afternoon.

At least 57 bodies have been recovered from the crash site.

"But we are still to determine whether these 57 people were all on board the flight or include area residents as a number of houses have been badly damaged by the aircraft when it crashed," Sindh Health Minister Azra Pechuho was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

Three passengers, miraculously, survived.

According to reports, the plane was making its second attempt to land on the airport. In the final moments before the crash, recorded on a flight tracking website, one of the pilots can be heard telling the Air Traffic Controller that they had lost both the engines, before sending the international distress message, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday".

Eyewitnesses said the plane first hit a mobile tower and crashed over houses in Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir. The wreckage and several houses in the area caught fire, visuals by Pakistan media earlier in the day showed.