In a tragic incident, 48 passengers died on the spot when a Pakistani plane in which they were traveling crashed on Wednesday. Authorities said, "this is one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the nation's history."

"Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Flight PK661 came down after one of its two turboprop engines failed while traveling from the city of Chitral to Islamabad", the civil aviation authority said.

Rescuers, including hundreds of villagers, removed the charred remains found meters away from Abbottabad district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

An AFP reporter at the site near the village of Saddha Bartoli said "part of the plane was still on fire more than five hours after the crash, as rescuers picked up torn human remains with their hands and placed them in bags before they were taken by ambulance to Islamabad for identification."

"The bodies were burnt so badly we could not recognize whether they were women or men," a villager in his thirties, who declined to give his name, told AFP.

"We put into sacks whatever we could find...and carried them down to the ambulance."

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Azam Saigol, the airline's chairman said "the plane was an ATR-42 turboprop aircraft, which contacted ground authorities after one engine failed and issued a Mayday call at 4:14 pm (1114 GMT).It began descending a minute later before disappearing from radar at 4:16 pm."

"This plane was technically sound, and was checked in October," he said, adding "the captain had flown more than 12,000 hours and the aircraft was nine years old."

"Our focus now is to retrieve all the dead bodies," he added, vowing a full investigation.

A senior rescue official on the site who requested anonymity added: "The villagers told us that the plane was shaky before it crashed. It was about to hit the village but it seems that the pilot managed to drag the plane towards the hills."

"Three foreigners were among the dead", officials said, "with Austria's foreign ministry later confirming two of its nationals were killed and Chinese state media saying one of its nationals was also among the victims."

Among those on board was Junaid Jamshed, a former Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim, according to the Chitral airport manager and a local police official.

Tributes poured in on social media for the former lead singer of the country's first major pop band, whose popular "Dil Dil Pakistan" became an unofficial national anthem.

"The voice of my youth, the voice of my generation.... #JunaidJamshed you will be sorely missed," tweeted user Huma A Shah.

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BY M. DIVYA SRI