ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Russian private jet carrying six people appears to have crashed in a remote area of rural Afghanistan, authorities said Sunday.
The crash occurred on Saturday in a mountainous area near the Zebak district of Badakhshan province, regional spokesperson Zabihullah Amiri announced, adding that a rescue team had been dispatched to the area. Zebak is a rural, mountainous region of only a few thousand people, located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.
The Badakhshan police chief's office also confirmed the report of the accident in a statement.
In Moscow, Russian civil aviation authorities announced that a Dassault Falcon 10 was missing along with four crew members and two passengers. The Russian-registered aircraft “stopped communicating and disappeared from radar screens,” authorities said. The flight departed from U-Tapao Rayong Pattaya International Airport in Thailand.
The plane was operating as an ambulance charter flight on a route from Gaya, India, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and then to Moscow's Zhukovsky International Airport.
Russian officials said the plane belonged to Athletic Group LLC and private individuals. The Associated Press could not immediately reach the owner. He also said the Falcon 10 involved in the crash was manufactured in 1978.
Russia's Investigative Committee subsequently announced that it had opened a criminal case on charges related to possible violations of aviation safety regulations or negligence. The procedure calls for launching such an investigation into the alleged crash.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said the Russian embassy in Afghanistan was cooperating with local authorities on the incident.
Another Taliban statement, by Abdul Wahid Rayan, spokesman for the Taliban's Ministry of Information and Culture, said the plane “belongs to a Moroccan company.” India's civil aviation authority similarly stated that the aircraft was Moroccan-registered. This discrepancy could not be quickly reconciled.
Mr Ryan declined to provide further details, but said the cause of the accident was an “engine problem”. Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghan air force rescue teams were searching the area.
The plane's tracking data from FlightRadar24, analyzed by The Associated Press, showed the plane's last location was just south of the Pakistani city of Peshawar around 13:30 GMT on Saturday. .
International airlines have been largely disabled in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over the country in 2021. The briefly overflying aircraft raced through Afghanistan's airspace for just a few minutes, passing through the sparsely populated Wakhan corridor in Badakhshan province, a narrow panhandle that juts out to the east of the country between Tajikistan and Pakistan. From then on, the flight continues.
Typically, planes bound for the corridor make a sharp turn north around Peshawar, following the Pakistan border before briefly entering Afghanistan. Zebak is located very close to the beginning of the Wakhan Corridor.
Although Afghanistan is a landlocked country, its location in Central Asia puts it along the most direct route for people traveling from India to Europe and the Americas. After the Taliban took power, civil aviation simply stopped because ground controllers could no longer control the airspace. Concerns about anti-aircraft fire led authorities around the world to order commercial airliners to retreat, especially after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014.
Countries are gradually easing these restrictions, but concerns about flying through the country remain. Two UAE airlines recently resumed commercial flights to Kabul.
The last plane crash in Afghanistan occurred in 2020, when a US Air Force Bombardier E-11A crashed in Ghazni province, killing two US soldiers.
