The head of Pakistan's civil defense body told NBC News that, contrary to earlier reports, no one travelling aboard the Airblue flight from Karachi to Islamabad had survived.
Initial reports suggested that up to five survivors had been pulled from the wreckage after the plane smashed into a heavily wooded hillside during a rainstorm.

"Dead bodies are lying all around," Bin Yameen, a senior Islamabad police official, told Reuters.
The dead included two U.S. citizens, the spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Richard Snelsire, said without providing further details.

Local TV footage showed twisted metal wreckage hanging from trees and scattered across the ground on a bed of broken branches. Rescuers said they had to dig through the debris with their bare hands, with flames and thick smoke hampering their work. There are no roads near the crash site, limiting access to rescue workers.

NBC News reported that muddy paths through the thickly wooded and foggy area were making it difficult for doctors and paramedics to reach the site by foot.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said the government does not suspect terrorism.

"The plane was about to land at the Islamabad airport when it lost contact with the control tower, and later we learned that the plane had crashed," said civil aviation official Pervez George, adding the model was an Airbus 321 and the flight number was ED202.
The crash site covered a large area on both sides of the hills, including a section behind Faisal Mosque, one of Islamabad's most prominent landmarks, and not far from the Daman-e-Koh resort.

'The weather is just too bad for flying' At Islamabad's international airport, passengers in the departure lounge scanned the television screens for news.

"I'm not surprised something like this has happened," Ahmed Fairuz, a passenger awaiting departure, told Reuters. "The weather is just too bad for flying."
There had been heavy monsoon rains in the area for at least a couple of days.

Hundreds of friends and relatives of those on board the flight swarmed ticket counters desperately seeking information at Islamabad's airport. A large cluster of people also surrounded the list of passengers on the flight, which was posted near the Airblue ticket counter. "Nobody is guiding anyone. People are running from one counter to another," said Arshad Mahmood, whose brother, Maulana Nawab Ulhasan, a prayer leader in a town near Islamabad, was on the flight."I'm praying for his survival, but I think there is little hope," Mahmood said. Arshad Ali said his cousin, Raza Ali, was supposed to be on the flight but missed it in Karachi on his way from Canada.


A helicopter flies over the smoldering wreckage of a passenger plane which crashed in the Margalla Hills on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, on Wednesday, July 28. All 152 people on board the Airblue passenger flight, including two Americans, were killed.

Rescue workers search the site of the crash of an Airblue passenger plane on the outskirts of Islamabad. The Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain on a steep hillside.  

Volunteers on a rescue operation observe as smoke rises from the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed in the Margalla Hills.

Rescue workers run with a stretcher.

A Pakistani man peers through the window of an ambulance transporting bodies of victims.

Pakistani relatives surround airport officials giving information about a passenger plane crash on the outskirts of Islamabad, at the Karachi airport on Wednesday.  

Pakistani women mourn their father, after his death in the plane crash on Wednesday. Pakistan declared a day of national mourning and called off a cabinet meeting after the disaster.

Pakistani rescuers carry the body of a person who perished in the plane crash into a hospital in Islamabad on Wednesday.

Relatives gather at Jinnah International Airport, in Karachi, as they wait for updates on the fate of their relatives who were traveling on the Airblue plane that crashed on Wednesday.