A passenger plane of a private airliner carrying 152 people crashed in a ball of flames Wednesday into densely wooded hills outside Islamabad amid heavy rain and poor visibility, killing everyone on board.

Rescue officials said pieces of charred flesh and body parts were littered around the smouldering wreckage, partially buried on a remote hillside, in the deadliest crash involving a Pakistani passenger jet in 18 years.

Private airline Airblue’s flight ED 202 from Karachi was being diverted into land at Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International airport when witnesses saw it flying at an unusually low altitude before a defeaning boom.

The plane disintegrated into a gorge between two hills, enveloped in cloud and some distance from the road, severely hampering rescue efforts and limiting visibility for helicopters hovering overhead.

“I saw a big ball of smoke and fire everywhere with big pieces of aircraft rolling down the hill,” said police official Haji Taj Gul.

“The plane was flying very low. Then we heard a loud noise,” said Wajih-ur Rehman, a resident of the exclusive E-7 neighbourhood in the Margalla foothills, home to Western expatriates and some of Pakistan’s elite.

“Nobody survived,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. Bodies were mostly mutilated and in pieces, and would require identification, he said.

The civil aviation authority and Airblue said there were 152, including six crew, on board the doomed plane.

Zeeshan Haider, a Civil Aviation Authority official said seven children, including two babies, were on the flight manifest.

Reports had said a handful of people survived the disaster, but asked whether all those on board died Malik replied: “Yes, all of them are dead”.

“It’s a big tragedy. It’s really a big tragedy,” the minister said.

The US embassy said two Americans were on the flight.

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