ISLAMABAD: Charred human flesh and families torn apart were all that was left after Pakistan's Airblue flight ED 202 from Karachi to Islamabad crashed into a wooded hillside in thick cloud and heavy rain.

No one knows why the Airbus 321 ploughed into the hillside and disintegrated into a gorge in a ball of flames, but the commuter flight ended in carnage at 9:45 am (0445 GMT) and plunged Pakistan into mourning.

“The bodies are charred and disintegrated beyond recognition. Human limbs were stuck in the bush,” rescue official Syed Zahir Shah told AFP.

“Faces of two dead women and an infant were the only pieces I could recognise,” Shah added, after recovering eight bodies on the slippery hillside during at times heavy rain.

Military helicopters could be seen airlifting body bags in slings above the site, where police said wreckage exploded in three different directions.

Thick black smoke and flames licked from blackened wreckage strewn across the wooded hills.

“All we could see were charred hands or feet. I collected two heads, two legs and two hands in a bag,” rescue official Arshad Javed told AFP.

“We shouted if anyone was there alive, but heard no voice,” said Javed.

One honeymoon couple in their 20s had been on board the flight, their dreams of swapping the steamy metropolis of Karachi for a magical holiday in the balmy weather of northern Pakistan brutally crushed.

Business executive Mohammad Ovais, 26, had been overjoyed at the prospect of his honeymoon, his 23-year-old cousin Nadeem Ahmed told AFP.

“Ovais was very happy after his wedding was solemnised early this month and planned to celebrate their honeymoon in Islamabad and the surrounding scenic northern areas,” he said sobbing.

“His parents are in a deep shock. So is rest of the family. The couple was full of life and their loss so soon after the marriage has stunned us all.”

For relatives gathered at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad, the heady excitement at greeting loved ones turned to grief and devastation.

Bilal Haider stood in tears, waiting to pick up younger brother Abbas who had gone to Karachi for a job interview at a bank.

“Had we known that this is going to happen, we would had never sent him,” Haider told AFP of his brother, who had just graduated with a Masters in business administration.

“We cannot explain our agony,” said Bilal.

At Islamabad's main hospital PIMS, relatives chased after ambulances as they slowly brought back bodies recovered in the rain and mist from the Margalla Hills, many still hoping to find the alive, wailing and consoling each other.

Jehanzeb Khan, a labourer from Islamabad's twin city Rawalpindi, told AFP that five of his relatives had been on the flight, coming up from Karachi to attend his mother's funeral.

“My mother died last night and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece, nephew and an uncle were coming to attend her funeral,” Khan said.

The family had been taking his mother's body to Khyber, a tribal district on the border with Afghanistan for burial, when news broke of the crash.

“We sent my mother's body with a relative to Khyber and came back to Islamabad to find out about our relatives, but there is no information. A huge tragedy has befallen upon our family,” Khan said.