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A 26-year-old Pakistani woman was among the 64 passengers on American Airlines Flight 5342 that crashed on Wednesday night following a collision with a U.S. military Black Hawk training helicopter.

While speaking to reporters, Asra Hussain Raza’s husband, 25-year-old Hamaad Raza, shared that the last message he received was a text that said, “We are landing in 20 minutes.” His replies, however, were never sent. It was while Hamaad was waiting at the airport to receive her that the plane collided with the helicopter. 

 

Upon hearing the tragic news, he prayed that she is rescued from the river, in hopes that maybe she made it alive.

 

The crash took place minutes before the airplane was set to land at Reagan National Airport near Washington DC, on Wednesday night when it collided with an Army helicopter in midair, after which both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River.

 

In an interview with Reuters, his father, Dr. Hashim Raza, revealed that the couple met at Indiana University Bloomington. Asra had studied corporate finance and was a “straight-A student”.

 

She then completed her master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and began a job with a consulting group in Washington DC. Her goal, as per the father-in-law, was to work for the government to improve public health and help people,

 

Hashim Raza would also push her to open a restaurant as she was “a great cook” and made Indian, Italian, and Chinese food.

 

Asra was on her way back from Wichita, Kansas, where she would travelled to every month to assist in improving the hospital’s operations when the collision took place only minutes before her landing. 

 

“She was an extremely caring person,” he said.”

 

Hamaad Raza lives in the state of Missouri and has reportedly been married to Asra for two years now. He presently works as an accountant at Ernst & Young.

 

Dr Hashim is originally from Karachi, Pakistan, and graduated from Dow University. He is now among Missouri’s most distinguished doctors and is currently working at the Missouri Baptist Medical Center.

 

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif conveyed his sorrow over the loss of lives, expressing his condolences to US President Donald Trump and the American people on X (formerly Twitter).

 

“Deeply saddened by the tragic news of a mid-air accident between a passenger plane and a military helicopter in Washington DC. Our thoughts and prayers are with US President Donald Trump and the American people at this difficult time,” he wrote.

Black box recovery

Investigators on Thursday recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane that collided mid-air with a military helicopter over Washington’s Potomac River, killing all 67 people, as rescuers pulled bodies from the freezing water.

US President Donald Trump launched a political attack, blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.

Trump’s politicization of the tragedy came as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter late Wednesday.

“The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.

According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred.

One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.

A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews to search for victims in the dark and cold.

Over 40 bodies had been recovered as of Thursday evening, according to US media reports.

The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.

Trump politicizes crash

The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 — occurred as American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas came in to land.

Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.

Just 24 hours before the collision, another plane coming in to land at Reagan National had to make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path, The Washington Post and CNN reported, citing an audio recording from air traffic control.

An Iraqi refugee in Sweden who repeatedly desecrated the Holy Quran in 2023, sparking outrage in Muslim countries, has been shot dead in the south of Stockholm, investigators said Thursday, with Sweden’s prime minister suggesting “a foreign power” might have been involved.

Prosecutor Rasmus Oman confirmed that an investigation has been opened into the murder of 38-year-old Salwan Momika,  leading to five arrests. 

“We’re in the very early stages… there’s a lot of information gathering. Five people have been detained suspected of involvement in the crime,” Oman said.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters at a press conference: “I can guarantee that the security services are deeply involved in this because there is obviously a risk that there is also a link to foreign power.”

A Stockholm court was set to rule on Thursday whether Momika, a Christian Iraqi, was guilty of inciting ethnic hatred but said it has postponed its ruling until February 3 as a result of his death.

Police responded late Wednesday to a call about a shooting in an apartment building in the city of Sodertalje, where Momika lived.

They found a man who had been shot and who later died in hospital, a police statement said.

Several media outlets reported that the shooting had been broadcast live on social media, videos of which are circulating all over the internet. 

The newspaper Aftonbladet said that the attacker was able to gain entry into the building through the roof.

In August, Momika and fellow protester Salwan Najem were charged with “agitation” against Muslims on four occasions in the summer of 2023.

According to the charge sheet, the two desecrated the holy book, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims — on one occasion outside a Stockholm mosque.

“I’m next on the list,” Najem wrote on X after Momika’s death, telling Swedish media that he had received death threats.

Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s activities. 

Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.

In August of that year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the Quran burnings had made the country a “prioritised target”.

The Swedish government condemned the desecrations while repeating the Western narrative of constitutionally protecting freedom of speech and assembly laws in the country. 

‘Don’t want to harm’ Sweden

Speaking to Aftonbladet in April 2023, Momika had said he never intended thr desecration to cause any trouble in Sweden, where he had lived since 2018.

“I don’t want to harm this country that received me and preserved my dignity,” he said.

In October 2023, the Swedish Migration Agency revoked his residency permit, citing false information in his original application, but he was granted a temporary one as it said there was an “impediment to enforcement” of a deportation to Iraq.

The month before, Iraq had requested his extradition over one of the burnings.

In March 2024, Momika left Sweden to seek asylum in Norway, telling AFP that Sweden’s freedom of expression and protection of human rights was “a big lie”.

Norway deported him back to Sweden several weeks later.

Before arriving in Sweden, Momika’s social media accounts tell a story of an erratic political career in Iraq.

It included links to a Christian armed faction during the fight against the Islamic State, the creation of an obscure Syriac political party, rivalries with influential Christian paramilitaries and a brief arrest.

He also joined the massive anti-corruption protests that gripped Iraq in late 2019, which were met with a crackdown that killed over 600 people nationwide.

In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted another man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Quran burning, the first time the country’s court system had tried anyone on charges of desecrating Muslim’s holy book.

Prosecutors have previously said that under Swedish law, the burning of the Quran can be seen as a critique of the book and religion and thus be protected under free speech.

However, depending on the context and statements made at the time, it can also be considered “agitation against an ethnic group”.