At least 54 persons have on Friday been killed, with more feared dead after a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320 flying from Lahore crashed in the densely populated Model Colony residential area of Karachi.

Officials say the Airbus A320 passenger airliner carrying 91 passengers and eight crew crashed as it was about to approach the airport in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

A health ministry spokesperson told Al Jazeera news agency that at least two male passengers of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight PK-8303 from the eastern city of Lahore to Karachi survived the crash.

With many other feared dead, the pilot had reported a loss of engine power and subsequently issued a mayday.

An airline spokesman said the plane lost contact with air traffic control just after 14:30 local time (09:30 GMT).

According to local media, witnesses said the plane rapidly lost altitude and crashed short of the runway into the Model Colony neighbourhood.

The opening day of China’s national people’s congress focused on a controversial security law for Hong Kong that would likely ban treason, subversion and sedition.

This new security law has already faced significant backlash from the US, Taiwan and pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong.

Beijing tried to introduce a similar law in 2003 but shelved the initiative because of mass protests.

Experts say this new law is a major blow to the city’s freedoms which they say breaks china’s promise to allow Hong Kong freedoms not seen elsewhere in China.

Pro-democracy activists have called for mass protests against what they describe as erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

The draft law was submitted at the annual National People’s Congress (NPC), which largely rubber-stamps decisions already taken by the communist leadership, but is still the most important political event of the year.

Brazil has recorded its highest covid-19 death toll of eleven hundred, eighty-eight in one day, bringing the total fatalities to more than twenty thousand.

The country carries the brunt of the virus with three hundred and ten thousand confirmed cases in the whole of Latin America.

The nation comes behind united states and Russia in number of infections and deaths, making it the third most affected country in the world.

Sao Paulo, Brazil’s economic and cultural capital, is the most affected with about a quarter of the recorded deaths and infections.

Almost all of the country’s 27 states are under some sort of lockdown order.