ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- Investigators today sought the cause of the crash of a Gulf Air jetliner that slammed into desert mountains while trying to land at Abu Dhabi airport, killing all 112 people aboard.
Dubai radio said that before losing contact Friday with air controllers, the pilot reported an engine malfunction. The radio gave no further details.
A special investigation team was dispatched from Bahrain, where the airline is based, to attempt to determine the cause of the fiery crash.
A Gulf Air spokesman said the 105 passengers on flight 771 from Karachi, Pakistan, to Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Kuwait included 96 Pakistanis, seven Britons, one American and an Iranian. No identifications were available.
The seven crew members aboard the Boeing 737 included the Omani pilot, the Bahraini co-pilot and five others whose nationalities were not immediately known.
The 96 Pakistanis, who lived and worked in the Persian Gulf region, were returning after a visit home for the Moslem Id al Adha feast. The Gulf Air spokesman said the plane crashed after it 'failed to land at Abu Dhabi.'
Rescue teams, including investigators and 10 physicians, were flown by helicopter to the scene of the crash, some 30 miles north of Abu Dhabi, said a spokesman for Dubai police emergency operations.
The control tower at Abu Dhabi International Airport lost contact with the aircraft as it was approaching the tiny Persian Gulf nation, the Emirates News Agency WAM reported.
Only 15 minutes later, rescue teams in helicopters located the blazing wreckage of the plane on desert slopes, the Dubai police spokesman said.
The spokesman said the bodies of the victims were mangled and no survivors could be found.
'The bodies were found in a sandy, arid area,' said the spokesman. 'We know that none of the passengers survived.'
He said a search was under way for the airliner's flight recorder, the so-called 'black box' with cockpit recordings that could provide clues to causes of the crash.
Gulf Air, serving the region's oil-rich desert kingdoms, is owned by Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, with headquarters in Bahrain.
In Karachi, between 3,000 and 4,000 anxious and grief-stricken people mobbed the airport, prompting airport authorities to call for police reinforcements.
Two Gulf Air flights, including the one that ended in tragedy, had left Karachi in a three hour span, and hundreds of people sought to find out if their loved ones were among those who perished.
As the day wore on scores of men and women thronging the airport could be seen weeping. Three women fainted on hearing there were no survivors.
The Gulf Air office at Karachi airport appeared to be in totalconfusion.
It had no manifest, and staff members worked hurriedly to prepare a passenger list from the airline's copies of passenger tickets and embarkation cards borrowed from immigration officials.
