ISLAMABAD: Remains of victims of the PIA PK-661 are being brought to Islamabad for DNA testing.
In its first phase 23 bodies reached Islamabad, via three Army helicopters.
A PIA plane carrying 47 people crashed Wednesday on a domestic flight from the mountainous northern city of Chitral to Islamabad, killing all on board.
The plane took off from Chitral around 3:50PM and PIAÂ said the plane crashed at 1642 local time (1142 GMT) in the Havelian area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about 125 km north of Islamabad.
DNA samples are being taken at PIMS Hospital in Islamabad where victim families have gathered. Authorities said help desks have been established at the hospital for families of the victims.
DNA tests may take six to eight days, state minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry said, adding that remains of singer-turned-preacher Junaid Jamshed has not yet been identified.
“Not one body was intact,” an official at Ayub Medical Complex in Abbottabad where the bodies were initially brought told the Media.
Rescuers, including hundreds of villagers, had overnight pulled charred and smoking remains from the wreckage of the aircraft, parts of which were found hundreds of metres away from the main site in Abbottabad district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The Media  reporter at the site near the village of Saddha Batolni said part of the plane remained on fire more than five hours after the crash.
“The bodies were burnt so badly we could not recognise whether they were women or men,” a villager in his thirties, who declined to give his name.
“We put into sacks whatever we could find… and carried them down to the ambulance.”
Six of the victims had already been identified through fingerprints, according to Ali Baz, another official at the Ayub Medical Complex, the Agency reported.
Details of the identified passengers were pasted on the wall outside the mortuary.
An investigation team visited the Pakistan International Airline (PIA) crash site.
Authorities handed over the black box from the plane to the team led by Air Commodore Munir Butt.
Teams from the CAA and PIA collected evidence and left.
The debris of the aircraft will be transported to Karachi or Islamabad in a helicopter, a PIA official said.
PIA Chairman Azam Saigol while confirming there were no survivors of the tragic plane crash said the aircraft was ‘fit to fly’.
Speaking at a news conference here, Azam Saigol said the PIA has 11 ATR aircraft in its fleet and they all have been ‘reliable’.
“The plane which crashed on Wednesday was A-checked in October,” he said in response to rumours about technical issues with the aircraft, adding that this certification is conducted after every 500 hours of flying.
“There is no room of human error regarding fitness certification of the plane, however, the incident will be probed thoroughly,” the PIA chairman assured, hinting at assistance by international agencies in the investigations.
Saigol said “it was our plane and our passengers”, yet contending the air travel was still the safest means of transportation. “We will ascertain the causes of the crash and will inform you,” he told anxious newsmen.
“This, however, should not be expected from the PIA that it would fly unfit jets,” he added.
According to a spokesperson for the Commissioner’s office in Hazara Division, 42 bodies have been recovered from the plane’s wreckage, which had scattered over several kilometres. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said around 500 army personnel were taking part in the operation to recover the bodies. Witnesses on the crash site earlier said there were unlikely to be any survivors.
According to Civil Aviation Authority officials, the ATR-42 turboprop plane with 47 passengers went missing from the radar near the town of Havelian in Abbottabad district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province while it was on its way to Islamabad. The ill-fated plane crashed at around 4:42 pm PST