Five crew members remain missing after the wreckage of a Boeing 737 plane that went missing off the coast of Pakistan has been located, aviation officials have said.

Pakistan’s Airports Authority said efforts are under way to find those who were on board the private cargo plane which had been travelling from Karachi, a city in southern Pakistan, to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday.

The Boeing 737 – operated by K2 Airways – rapidly descended and lost contact with air traffic controllers on Tuesday at 21:21 local time (16:21 GMT), the authority said.

The plane had reported a navigation system problem minutes before its descent, it added.

After a 12-hour search involving air and sea assets, the wreckage was recovered from 53 nautical miles south of Ormara, a port town on the coast of the Arabian Sea.

Ormara is located 360 kilometres (223 miles) west of Karachi, where the plane began its journey.

The last major aviation incident in Pakistan involved a domestic passenger flight in 2020.

In that incident, a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed while approaching Karachi airport, killing all but two of the 99 people on board.