There are unlikely to be any survivors from a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane carrying about 40 people that crashed on Wednesday in a mountainous northern region, a government official at the crash site said.

PIA said its plane lost contact with the control tower en route to the capital, Islamabad, from the northern region of Chitral. The plane crashed in the Havelian area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, about 125 km (77 miles) north of Islamabad. "All of the bodies are burned beyond recognition. The debris is scattered," Taj Muhammad Khan, a government official based in Havelian, told Reuters. Khan, who was at the site of the crash, said witnesses told him "the aircraft has crashed in a mountainous area, and before it hit the ground it was on fire".