ISLAMABAD (AP) – A Russian private jet carrying six people is believed to have crashed in rural Afghanistan, authorities said yesterday.
The crash happened on Saturday in a mountainous area near Zebak district in Badakhshan province, regional spokesman Zabihullah Amiri said, adding that a rescue team had been dispatched to the area. Zebak is some 250 kilometres northeast of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. It is a rural, mountainous area, home to only several thousand people.
Badakhshan police chief’s office also confirmed the report of the crash in a statement.
In Moscow, Russian civil aviation authorities said a Dassault Falcon 10 went missing with four crew members and two passengers.
The Russian-registered aircraft “stopped communicating and disappeared from radar screens”, authorities said.
It described the flight as starting from Thailand’s U-Tapao-Rayong-Pattaya International Airport.
The plane had been operating as a charter ambulance flight on a route from Gaya, India, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and onward to Zhukovsky International Airport in Moscow.
Russian officials said the plane was built in 1978 and belongs to Athletic Group LLC and a private individual. The AP could not immediately reach its owners.
Russia’s Investigative Committee later said it had opened a criminal case on charges relating to potential violations of air safety rules or negligence. Procedures call for such investigations to be opened over suspected crashes.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said that the Russian Embassy in Afghanistan was working with local officials on the incident.
A separate Taleban statement from Abdul Wahid Rayan, a spokesman for the Taliban’s Information and Culture Ministry, described the plane as “belonging to a Moroccan company”. Indian civil aviation officials similarly described the aircraft as Moroccan-registered.
The plane had been with a medical evacuation company based in Morocco. However, a man who answered a telephone number associated with it said the firm was no longer in business and the aircraft now belonged to someone else.
Rayan blamed an “engine problem” for the crash, without elaborating. The Taleban’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said air force rescue teams were searching the area.