State-run Pakistan Television said the air force Fokker-27 turboprop in which Mir and the others were traveling crashed in an accident caused by "technical reasons," but did not elaborate.

Air force spokesman Air Commodore Sarfraz Ahmed Khan told Reuters the debris of the plane had been found in a hilly area 17 miles east of the town of Kohat in northwestern Pakistan.

He said the cause of the crash was not yet known.

The aircraft had been on a flight from Islamabad, 72 miles east of Kohat, state media reported. Television said it took off at 8:35 a.m. (10:35 p.m. EST Wednesday) and lost contact with the control tower 17 minutes later.

"There are no survivors. We have found the wreckage," another military spokesman, Brigadier Saulat Raza, told Reuters.

PTV said those killed included two air vice marshals, two air force commodores and Mir's wife Bilqees.

A senior air force office said Mir's wife had been traveling in her official role as chairwoman of the Pakistan Air Force Women's Welfare Association. All the other dead were air force personnel, including eight crew, state television said.

The air force officer said the Fokker was used to transport VIPs.

Military officials said the air chief, who was 55 and had held his job since November 2000, and the others had been on their way to Kohat air base, where they planned to spend a few hours for an annual inspection before returning to Islamabad.

The crash came after Pakistan experienced four successive days of heavy rain, some of the heaviest downpours in decades. Residents of Kohat said it was cloudy at the time of the crash, but not raining.

President Perrvez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali expressed shock and grief and said the deaths of Mir and the other officers were a great national loss, television said.