At least seven people have been feared dead as a Russian private jet crashed in a remote area of rural Afghanistan.
The head of the local Information and Culture Department, Badakhshan Province of northeast Afghanistan, Zabihullah Amiri, confirmed the incident on Sunday, January 21, 2024.
According to him, the crash happened on Saturday in a mountainous area near Zebak district in Badakhshan province, adding that a rescue team had been dispatched to the area.
Zebak is some 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, 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 reported the disappearance of a Dassault Falcon 10 carrying four crew members and two passengers.
The Russian-registered aircraft lost communication and vanished from radar screens after departing from Thailand’s U-Tapao-Rayong-Pattaya International Airport.
The plane, operating as a charter ambulance flight from Gaya, India, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and then Zhukovsky International Airport in Moscow, is owned by Athletic Group LLC and a private individual, according to Russian officials. The Falcon 10 involved in the crash was built in 1978.
Contradictory information emerged as a Taliban 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 also identified the aircraft as Moroccan-registered. The discrepancy in ownership could not be immediately clarified. Rayan attributed the crash to an “engine problem” without providing further details.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24, analyzed by the Associated Press, indicated the aircraft’s last known position was just south of Peshawar, Pakistan, around 1:30 p.m. GMT on Saturday.
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