By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Two military pilots have been killed after a Pakistan Air Force trainer aircraft crashed near Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Monday, the military’s media wing announced, in the second fatal aviation accident to strike Pakistan’s armed forces within a week.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) confirmed that Flight Lieutenant Muhammad Qasim Abdullah of the Pakistan Air Force and Lieutenant Taha Abbasi of the Pakistan Navy died when the aircraft came down during what was described as a routine training sortie. Air Headquarters has convened a board of inquiry to establish the cause of the crash.
Field Marshal Asim Munir, who holds the positions of both Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, joined the country’s service chiefs and the broader ranks of the armed forces in expressing what the ISPR described as “deep grief” at the loss. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also issued separate statements of condolence, each paying tribute to the two officers by name.
President Zardari said the nation would “always remember the sacrifices of its brave sons”, while the prime minister praised what he called the “unparalleled professionalism and dedication” of Pakistan’s armed forces. Both leaders offered prayers for the families of the dead.
The crash comes five days after a separate disaster claimed the lives of all personnel aboard an Mi-17 helicopter operated by Pakistan Army Aviation, which went down near Muzaffarabad on 10 June during take-off following what the ISPR attributed to a technical fault. “There were no survivors,” the military said at the time, adding that a further board of inquiry had been ordered into that incident.
Monday’s accident is the latest in a sustained pattern of military aviation losses that has drawn recurring public attention. Last September, five soldiers died when an army helicopter crashed in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan, again due to a reported technical failure. A month earlier, a rescue helicopter operated by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government crashed in Mohmand district in bad weather, killing both pilots and three crew members.
The second half of 2022 proved particularly grim. In August of that year, the wreckage of a Pakistan Army helicopter was recovered in Balochistan’s Lasbela district, a day after the aircraft disappeared. All six people on board perished, among them Lieutenant General Sarfraz Ali, the commander of 12 Corps — one of the most senior officers to die in a military air accident in recent memory. The following month, six army personnel including two majors were killed when a helicopter crashed during an operational mission near Khost in the Harnai district of Balochistan.
Earlier incidents extend the toll further. In December 2021, two pilots were killed in an army aviation crash at Siachen in Ghanche district, and the year before that, four soldiers died during a casualty evacuation flight in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Astore district. A 2015 crash of a military helicopter near Mansehra in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa killed all twelve people on board.
The causes cited across these incidents have varied — technical faults, adverse weather, and in some cases, undetermined factors pending.
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