Pakistan on Thursday mourned the 48 victims of its deadliest plane crash in four years, among them a famed-rockstar-turned-Muslim evangelist, two infants and three foreigners, as officials sought to pinpoint the cause of the disaster. Engine trouble was initially believed responsible, but many questions remain, stirring new worries about the safety record of money-losing state carrier Pakistani International Airlines.
Outpourings of grief erupted online soon after flight PK661 smashed into the side of a mountain near the town of Havelian, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, late on Wednesday afternoon, after taking off from the mountain resort of Chitral. It crashed just 50 km (31 miles) short of its destination, the international airport in Islamabad, the capital.
Much of the anguish focused on Junaid Jamshed, the vocalist of Vital Signs, one of Pakistan’s first and most successful rock and pop bands of the 1990s, who abandoned his musical career in 2001 to become a travelling evangelist with the conservative Tableeghi Jamaat group.
