Agonising wait for relatives of Pakistan crash victims

Islamabad: Anguished relatives lashed out at Pakistani authorities on Thursday, devastated to discover that the laborious process of identifying the remains of their loved ones could take up to a week.

Family members sat sobbing at an Islamabad community centre, as they gave blood samples so that authorities can match DNA against the charred remains of victims lying in an industrial-sized cold storage in Islamabad.

Airblue passenger list

"What will the poor people, especially those who came from other cities like Karachi, do for one week?" said Touheed Alvi, who lost his brother, Farid Alvi in the crash.

Airblue flight ED 202 from Karachi to Islamabad crashed in a ball of flames, killing all 152 people on board and disintegrating in the heavily forested Margalla Hills outside the Pakistani capital in heavy rain and poor visibility.

Farid had been flying home after visiting his elder brother Touheed, a professor at DJ Science College in Karachi.

In pictures: Pakistan air crash

"The government has all resources at its disposal and should have completed this process quickly but this did not happen," Touheed said, tears welling in his eyes.

The government set up a DNA sample collection point at the community centre, where emotional relatives swapped memories of their loved ones and sought solace over Wednesday's tragedy as the "will of God the almighty."

"What can we do... We are all helpless," said one man queuing up to give a blood sample.

"This is God the almighty's will," he said, looking upwards to try to hide his tears, which rolled down his cheeks.

Audio: Radio 1 reports on the Pakistan air crash

The Airbus 321 was coming in to land at Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International airport Wednesday when witnesses saw it flying at an unusually low altitude before hearing a deafening boom.

The plane broke apart into a gorge between two hills, scattering debris across hillsides enveloped in cloud and some distance from the road, severely hampering initial rescue efforts.

Faisal Arayein was left bewildered and helpless after being told he could not fly the body of his brother Asim back to Karachi even after identifying the remains.

"Officials are now asking me to contact Airblue, which is really unfair," he told AFP. "I'm clueless about why the authorities are not allowing me to take the body of my brother... this is not fair."

Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences official Raja Abdus Sattar told AFP that 30 blood samples had been collected since early Thursday.

It would take at least six to seven days to collect all samples and get the results, he said.

Pakistani cabinet minister Khurshid Shah visited the centre and told a group of relatives that the government had rejected a proposal to bury the crash victims in a mass grave.

"It would have created an impression that the government wanted to cover up the issue," Shah said.