Pakistan mourns 127 killed in crash; investigation begins

The remains of 127 people onboard a plane that crashed near Islamabad were on Saturday handed over to relatives, but the Civil Aviation Authority said the investigation would take three months to a year to complete. Mehmod Jamal, the executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, said all the postmortems had been completed. "We have recognized 115 bodies so far, and 112 bodies were handed over to their heirs," dpa quoted Jamal as saying. Earlier Saturday, Jamal said they had received body parts collected in 140 bags from the crash site. "No single body was found in one piece." The private Bhoja Airlines-owned Boeing 737-200 flying from Karachi to Islamabad went down Friday about 15 kilometres short of the airport, killing all the passengers and crew. On Saturday, hundreds of mourners thronged to the airports in both Islamabad and Karachi, as well as PIMS to collect the remains.